I heard a radio spot this morning on NPR that, although it was discussing the Middle East, made me think of China.  "Backstory of a Revolution: Studying Tweets, Posts," considered how social media and internet communications had changed people's expectations and preferences in the Middle East and North Africa, feeding into the various uprisings there in recent weeks. 

Mazen Nahawi, a PR and "news management" guy from Dubai, makes some interesting points: more extensive personal communications via the internet instills in people an experience and expectation of choice.  People choose how to express themselves individually. They choose various commodities to consume.  And they choose from an ever-expanding menu of media outlets for information and news and lifestyles.  He says (my transcription):  a "muscle of freedom has been exercised" and that it is "a psychology of freedom that created the consciousness which led people to Tahrir Square."

I think something similar has been going on in China in recent decades and the Party there knows it, which might explain the very strong crack down now underway against dissent in China. 

Analysts of Chinese politics are familiar with the cyclical pattern of repression and relative openness in post-Mao China.  Moments of liberalization, when it seems more heterodox ideas can be expressed, alternate with periods of stricter control. The current crackdown could be another iteration of this familiar pattern, brought on by the regime's worries about the Jasmine Revolution in North Africa, together with nervousness about the leadership transition now in the works (which will culminate next year).

But the current moment might be different than repressions of the past.  Younger generations of Chinese are more used to a certain freedom of expression, not only on line but also among themselves in small groups.  Although the CCP works exceptionally hard to control the flow of information, many people, especially young urban people, have grown accustomed to fashioning and trading their own opinions.  Satire thrives and irony abounds.  And all of that adds up to something like a psychology of freedom; or, at the very least, an expectation of freedom of expression beyond what earlier generations of Chinese have held.

The regime is scared, more scared perhaps than in the past because it knows that people's minds are changing, their expecations are expanding.  And the crack down will simply demonstrate that fear to a new generation of Chinese youth.  That will not be enough to pose a fundamental political challenge to the regime, but it will reproduce a kind of cultural dissidence.  Ai Weiwei and Han Han will likely gain more sympathizers.

And if it is true that something like a psychology of freedom, like rights consciousness, is growing in China, then this will have implications for the reception of ancient Chinese thought there.  For Confucianism to find relevance, it may have to be reconciled with a nascent Chinese liberalism…