"Two thousand and eight was to have been an auspicious year for China. But the year has been anything but.
In January, a wave of polite demonstrations over planned urban development washed over Shanghai. Then freak snowstorms left 200,000 citizens stranded and angry over the government's failure to deal with the emergency. Next, demonstrations and riots broke out in Lhasa, Tibet's main city, and beyond. The flame of the Olympic torch relay was nearly doused by international protests and threats of a boycott. And now the catastrophic Sichuan earthquake has claimed as many as 50,000 lives, rendering millions homeless and raising fears of significant damage to the country's infrastructure.
And it's only May. No matter what happens next, 2008 is shaping up to be one of the most eventful and tragic years in recent Chinese history. And the way the Chinese people and the Communist Party leadership have risen to meet these unforeseen events challenges us in the West to rethink our often distorted view of China."
So begins a piece by Jeffrey Wasserstrom in The Nation. Wasserstrom is a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine and a co-founder and regular contributer to The China Beat: Blogging How the East is Red.
Wasserstrom puts forward five lessons, here, that are emerging from the events in China this year.
In January, a wave of polite demonstrations over planned urban development washed over Shanghai. Then freak snowstorms left 200,000 citizens stranded and angry over the government's failure to deal with the emergency. Next, demonstrations and riots broke out in Lhasa, Tibet's main city, and beyond. The flame of the Olympic torch relay was nearly doused by international protests and threats of a boycott. And now the catastrophic Sichuan earthquake has claimed as many as 50,000 lives, rendering millions homeless and raising fears of significant damage to the country's infrastructure.
And it's only May. No matter what happens next, 2008 is shaping up to be one of the most eventful and tragic years in recent Chinese history. And the way the Chinese people and the Communist Party leadership have risen to meet these unforeseen events challenges us in the West to rethink our often distorted view of China."
So begins a piece by Jeffrey Wasserstrom in The Nation. Wasserstrom is a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine and a co-founder and regular contributer to The China Beat: Blogging How the East is Red.
Wasserstrom puts forward five lessons, here, that are emerging from the events in China this year.
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