The Tao Te Ching is not a very good guide for contemporary politics.  The notion that "it’s impossible to govern once you’ve filled people with knowing (65)" is just too prone to authoritarian abuse (maybe Bush and company have read that passage!) to be useful in a democratic age.  But there are some passages that may be applicable today, and there are certainly some that speak to the continuing agony of Dongzhou.   Here’s passage 68:

A noble official is never warlike,
and a noble official is never angered.
A noble conqueror never faces an enemy,
and a noble leader stays below the people the wields.

This is called the Integrity of peacefulness,
the power of wielding the people,
the fullest extend of our ancient accord with heaven.

    Notice how this is about ruling people, "wielding" them.  But the means to that rule is not coercion, but "staying below the people."  The ruler should not rule from above or in front.  He should stay below and attract followers through his peaceful non-action.  Too bad the CCP never considered such a possibility.  Clearly, Hu and Wen, while fashioning themselves as "men of the people" are not noble leaders; they utterly lack the "integrity of peacefulness."

     Passage 75 also provides some insight into the Dongzhou killings:

The people are starving,
and it’s only because you leaders feast on taxes
that they’re starving.

The people are impossible to rule,
and it’s only because you leaders are masters of extenuation
that they’re impossible to rule.

The people take death lightly,
and it’s only because you leaders crave life’s lavish pleasures
that they take death lightly,

they who act without concern for life:
it’s a wisdom far beyond treasuring life.

    Now it must be said that the recent announcement that the Chinese government will abolish the agricultural tax next year would be welcome by the writer(s) of the Tao Te Ching.  But, it must also be said, there are many others ways in which farmers are exploited in China today.  The leaders may soon feast less on taxes, but they will still feast on various and sundry fees, and land takings, and misappropriated budgets, and so on and so forth…

    The second and third stanzas seem especially appropriate.  When thinking about the increase in protests and demonstrations, we should keep in mind that the character of the government is part of the cause.  The "extenuation" of government officials makes the people "impossible to rule."  Indeed, things have gotten so bad, as they did in Dongzhou, that people are willing to face directly the coercive power of the state, they no longer fear death.  And they are driven to that point by the daily reminders of corrupt officials living the good life while they struggle for crumbs. 

    The Party, and the dictatorship it wields, does violence to Tao.   And, if the Tao Te Ching  is to be believed, it is bringing about its own downfall.