The Chinese middle classes don’t demonstrate. They go for harmonious walks. In this case several thousand people strolled in harmony through the streets of Shanghai last week with one or two points to raise about the proposed extension of the city’s maglev system and the swathe it’s going to cut through the city’s residential areas.
Looking at the Shanghaiist report there seems to be a lot of cellphone co-ordination – people moving en masse from one direction to another without visible leadership - and the whole affair has a determinedly "civic" feel, with residents shouting “down with this sort of thing”*. In this sense it’s a replay of the Xiamen PX protests of last year.
In related news 51 Chinese bloggers are in jail. That report has now been blocked in China, so fill your boots.
*Actually, “Fan dui cixuanfu!” (Oppose the maglev)
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