ForeignPolicy.com has a good and relevant article up about China’s crackdown on civil society following the colored revolutioned in Eastern Europe and Central Asia over the past few years. Georgia and Ukraine were bad enough, but when Kyrgyzstan — also a part of China’s growing sphere of influence — also joined suit, the Chinese government has become wary of a repeat scenario either nationwide or in renegade provinces. The article gives some background, and then talks about how mediums of communication and NGOs have become caught in the crosshairs more than usual of late.

The recent democratic revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kirgizstan sent small tremors through China????????s leadership. To avoid its own ???????color revolution??????? Beijing is now quietly cracking down on those who would dare to show dissent. Its primary target? China????????s civil society.

China quietly observed the 2003 ???????Rose Revolution??????? in Georgia and the 2004 ???????Orange Revolution??????? in Ukraine. But for Beijing, the anti-authoritarian wave that swept Kirgizstan in this year????????s ???????Lemon Revolution??????? was one too many. In recent months, the Chinese government has begun to take firm action to make sure it doesn????????t have a color revolution of its own.

In China????????s halls of power, the fall of post-Soviet authoritarian regimes has raised the uncomfortable specter of a Chinese popular uprising. According to the Hong Kong-based Open magazine, a report by Chinese President Hu Jintao, titled Fighting the People????????s War Without Gunsmoke, is guiding the Chinese Communist Party????????s ???????counterrevolution??????? offensive. The report, disseminated inside the party, outlines a series of measures aimed at nipping a potential Chinese ???????color revolution??????? in the bud. In response to the report, government censorship was ratcheted up. Officials closed or restricted many popular online public bulletin boards and ordered all Web sites and blogs to register with the government. Books that delve too deeply into the country????????s economic disparities, such as the recent An Investigation of China????????s Peasantry, were removed from bookshelves. Party insiders described the heightened controls as neijin waisong, meaning ???????tight inside while appearing lax from the outside.???????

You might be able to see this in the context of almost all of Donald Rumsfeld’s trips to China, in which he tells the government that it needs to democratize as it economically liberalizes. The major problem here is that as economic pressures open up Chinese society, the government keeps trying to close it in order to maintain power.

Yet while this is certainly a problem, the Chinese government in general is so corrupt and so inefficient with regards to its duties that certain inequalities are surfacing that threaten to turn China completely backward.

The government has failed to create infrastructure and education opportunities outside if of its major cities. It has also failed to regulate the insane amounts of pollution (which the Jamestown Foundation calls a crisis) that companies in the country are pumping out. Money that is sometimes earmarked to address such issues are simply siphoned off by corrupt local officials. Also, in China, for the most part, you’re either really rich or really poor. There is at the present time no large middle class to drive reform.

This means that most activists nowadays aren’t the kind going out for freedom, democracy, and human rights. They’re generally residents of the rural areas who protest against the government’s inability to do anything. These protests, sometimes in the tens of thousands, do not generally end well.

But this social unrest is reaching ever-growing levels and is threatening the governments ability to rule legitimately. In response, it is taking steps to quell all dissent while not facing up to the fact that it needs to act like a government and solve these pressing issues. Of course, the only way to effectively address these issues and root out prevalent corruption is through transparent democratic processes. By backstepping, the Chinese government is only further risking the possibility of a revolution, and I honestly am not as optimistic as others about the years to come.