Brain Fertilizer

" But when you get a bunch of people together and encourage them to get a little angry, other issues start cropping up..."

Exactly! Look at what's going on in Huankantou right now. The peasants are angry over the pollution issues and how it has affected their health. The government has failed address their grievances and as a result their anger has began to boil over. They stormed the town and began rioting in the streets with such anger that not even the police could stop them.

This is an issue that many citizens of other provinces in China are not aware of as of yet, but rest assured, if the government doesn't deal with it very carefully an issue such as this could be a dangerous catalyst for something much bigger than anti-Japanese protests.

"So they created the People's Armed Police and gave 'em bunches of riot gear. It has worked so far; there have been dozens of large-scale protests --even a few riots!-- since 1989, and there still hasn't been even a small-scale massacre to date."

Well, they haven't been very effective in Huankantou, but I imagine the government is trying to regroup and handle this as tactfully as they can because many eyes from the outside world are watching this issue.

Incidentally, the riot police that you speak of are often sent to western countries to train in crowd control and other urban police tactics. When I taught at the Zhejiang University for Public Security, I helped facilitate somewhat of an exchange program between their university/academy and a couple of local police departments back home.

I think such exchanges are a great idea because I believe it helps to create an understanding between our people and our cultures and it also helps to provide a type of mindset that might make such incidents as the Tiananmen Square Massacre less likely to be repeated.

That's just my opinion though.

Gordon