BEIJING — In another era, China’s leaders might have been content to let discussion of the protests in Egypt float around among private citizens, then fizzle out.
But challenges in recent years to authoritarian governments around the globe and violent uprisings in parts of China itself have made Chinese officials increasingly wary of leaving such talk unchecked, especially on the Internet, the medium some officials see as central to fanning the flames of unrest.
So the arbiters of speech sprang into action over the weekend. Sina.com and Netease.com — two of the nation’s biggest online portals — blocked keyword searches of the word “Egypt,” though the mass protests were being discussed on some Internet chat rooms on Monday. Searching for “Egypt” has also been blocked on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.
Censoring the Internet is not the only approach. The Chinese government has also tried to get out ahead of the discussion, framing the Egyptian protests in a few editorials and articles in state-controlled news publications as a chaotic affair that embodies the pitfalls of trying to plant democracy in countries that are not quite ready for it — a line China’s leaders have long held.
The English-language edition of Global Times, a populist newspaper, ran an editorial on Sunday about the Tunisian and Egyptian protests with the headline “Color revolutions will not bring about real democracy.” Though Global Times is not the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party, the message of the editorial was consistent with official thinking, saying bluntly that whether democracy “is applicable in other countries is in question, as more and more unsuccessful examples arise.”
“The official Chinese media is reporting the Egypt events — it’s no longer possible for Xinhua and other official media to remain credible if they hide international news that people can learn from the Internet,” said Susan L. Shirk, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, who served as assistant deputy secretary of state during the Clinton administration. “But they reduce the risk that some Chinese might want to emulate them by describing them as ‘anti-government riots.'”
Some Chinese news organizations have also seized on the ambivalent American reaction to the Egyptian unrest to underscore the hypocrisy of the United States in sometimes backing dictators over democracy. They argued that those who appear to be the greatest advocates of democracy sometimes have conflicted feelings about its spread, especially in the Middle East, where the United States fears the proliferation of populist radical Islam. China Youth Daily noted in an editorial on Sunday that “the increasing turmoil in Egypt is causing a ‘headache’ for the decision makers in Washington.”
Some of the news coverage of Egypt that has appeared in People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s main newspaper, and Xinhua, the official news agency, has focused on attempts by China to evacuate its citizens, simply leaving out the political discontent at the root of the unrest. Xiao Qiang, an adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and an expert on Internet censorship in China, said propaganda officials had recently ordered Chinese news organizations and Web sites to strictly follow Xinhua reports on Egypt.
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