Originally published by USA TODAY,06 March 2011

By Calum MacLeod

For the third Sunday in a row, Chinese police swamped a downtown shopping street listed as a rally location by overseas, online organizers calling for “stroll-by” protests against China‘s government.

 But the atmosphere was less tense than on Feb. 27. There were a reduced number of uniformed and plainclothes security forces on obvious display — and, like last Sunday, no outward signs of protest.

In a bid to restrict reporting on possible protests, the vice director of Beijing‘s Foreign Affairs Office, Li Honghai, said Sunday that reporters must now apply for government permission to conduct any news gathering within the city center. Previous government rules for foreign journalists state that only the interviewee’s permission is required.

The calls to protest in 41 Chinese cities have been led by anonymous postings on the U.S.-based, Chinese language website boxun.com, which urge Chinese to gather in “Jasmine Rallies” inspired by the “Jasmine Revolution” uprisings against authoritarian regimes in the Arab world.

The problems in the Middle East will not “infect China,” Zhao Qizheng, who heads the foreign affairs committee of China’s top advisory body, said Saturday, according to the state-run China Daily newspaper.

Beijing is taking no chances. Besides the heavy street-side security, China’s Internet censors have blocked all online references to “Jasmine Rallies.” Rights groups including Human Rights in China and China Human Rights Defenders have reported that dozens of activists have been detained, and several face “subversion”-related charges that could lead to long jail sentences.

After several foreign journalists were harassed and detained last Sunday, Chinese officials warned many to stay away from the Wangfujing shopping district of Beijing or risk expulsion, said the Foreign Correspondents Club of China.

On Saturday, addressing the annual session of China’s legislature, Premier Wen Jiabao pledged to tackle the “great resentment” among China’s people over issues such as income disparity and corruption, he said. An official budget unveiled at the session showed China spent more on internal security than national defense in 2010, and will continue to do so this year.

A McDonald’s outlet at Wangfujing was among 55 locations suggested by the online organizers for people to gather in 41 different cities. The site is close to Tiananmen Square, where students formed the backbone of pro-democracy protests in 1989 that ended in a military crackdown.

In Wangfujing last week, one student doubted her generation would take such risks.

“There are disadvantages to a one-party system, and I would like to be able to choose our leaders, but stability is the most important thing for China now,” said Lu Yadong, a building design student in Dalian, eastern China, who was visiting Beijing and window-shopping with friends.

“Like my classmates, I feel we’d better focus on practical issues like finding work, so we don’t discuss politics much,” said Lu, 25, who had not heard of the online calls for protests.

“The Chinese people are afraid of change, afraid of chaos and not interested in confronting the Chinese authorities,” said Joseph Cheng, a China politics expert at the City University of Hong Kong. While China experiences many incidents of localized unrest, “the price of engaging in confrontation with the central leadership is very high, and very few are willing to pay that sort of price,” he said.

The Jasmine rallies are unlikely to develop any momentum as most Chinese expect the major jumps in living standards over the past three decades to continue, Cheng said. Those achievements are backed with an iron fist, he said.

“The central leadership want to make sure the potential for unrest will be eliminated even during the germination process,” he said.

Contributing: Associated Press

 http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2011-03-06-china-protests_N.htm