IHT's Ian Bremmer explores a question I've been wondering about for a while: why does China publish unrest statistics? I can't think of any democracy that publishes such statistics, yet China claims that here were 87,000 demonstrations in 2005. There must be a reason this data is made public.
The answer reveals the more immediate challenges facing President Hu Jintao's political and economic agenda.
Over the past year, a battle has begun within the Chinese leadership, pitting Hu and his allies against a growing range of critics. Hu's predecessor, Jiang Zemin, aggressively promoted the view that China's government must feed rapid economic development and that explosive growth in the country's eastern cities would fuel China's rise. Jiang's supporters, many of them based in Shanghai, have profited mightily from this strategy. But Hu warns that the social costs have now become unacceptably high.
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To consolidate his authority, Hu believes he must win the reform argument and purge the party of as many as possible of his predecessor's allies.
That's where the statistics come in. Jiang's government didn't publicize data on social unrest. When Hu assumed the presidency, protest statistics began to appear. To force policy changes through China's labyrinthine bureaucracy, senior officials are often forced to generate a crisis atmosphere that lends urgency to the implementation of their plans.
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