The crackdown also follows popular uprisings across the Middle East that appear to have given China’s leaders pause regarding their own hold on absolute power. In the view of some, it also tracks the influence in China’s ruling hierarchy of hard-liners like Zhou Yongkang, the public security chief who helped preside over the suppression of riots by ethnic Uighurs in western China’s Xinjiang region.
这次限令也刚好在中东骚乱之后出现,让中国领导人对其握着的专制权力有所犹豫。在一些人看来,这也是像周永康这样硬派的中国领导阶层产生影响。周曾协助主持镇压在中国西部的新疆地区的维吾尔族人的骚乱。
Nobody outside China’s closeted leadership knows the true reason for the maneuvers, beyond a general and intangible sense of uneasiness over the degree to which freer speech is taking root here.
The microblogs, or weibos, are perhaps the prime example. In the last year, weibos have become the forum of choice for Chinese to pass on news and gossip about scandals involving government and the elite.