What 1989 can teach us about the recent protests in China
The differences are as important as the similarities
China’s leader, Xi Jinping, often warns officials of the risk that Communist Party rule could unravel. He has told them to beware of efforts by “hostile forces” to foment a “colour revolution” in China: “a present danger”, as he sees it. He has ordered them to be alert to “foreseeable and unforeseeable” perils that could “evolve into political threats if not managed promptly and effectively”. He has repeatedly reminded them of how the Soviet Communist Party fell in 1991. The word he uses to convey that moment is hualala. It is a crashing sound.
This article appeared in the China section of the print edition under the headline “Echoes of the past”
From the December 3rd 2022 edition
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