„Rozruchy” czy „rewolucja”? Chińska prasa o Arabskiej Wiośnie
Riots or Revolutions? Arab Spring in People’s Daily Editorial

Summary/Abstract: PRC authorities execute a tight control over the media. Therefore it is significant if an editorial from the local newspaper Beijing Ribao is republished in the English language webportal of the most official national paper Renmin Ribao. The text, originally addressed to local readers, describes the ideological attitude of the PRC towards the events of the „Arab Spring”, especially in Libya. The main reasons for the unrest (young generation’s frustration about lack of political representation, corruption, growing economic disparity, expressed through new communication technologies, over which the authorities have little control) exist in similar form in China as well; because of that, the PRC authorities feel the need to „properly assess and interpret” the events, as being insired by the West, chaotic, disrupting existing social order and not being elite-driven. By refusing to call them „revolution”, the authorities aim to depreciate and delegitimize them in the eyes of the model Chinese reader. Such information policy is in conformity with internal policy aimed at controlling social order, and with the foreign policy, which supports the economic growth by acquiring natural resources, often from dictatorial regimes, with whom Beijing maintains cordial relations.

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