These meetings with the people of multiply

For the first time since 1989, the Chinese Communist Party is afraid. The Organization had not anticipated the sharp slowdown of the national economy. Suffering from the lack of dynamism of exports and foreign investment which fueled his spectacular flight since the 1980s, the growth of China would this year be limited to 9.5 after having reached 11.9 in 2007. Next year, this increase could not exceed the 7.5, has accused the World Bank.

S corruptions had always insisted that they need to generate at least 8 growth to ensure a stable development and to create enough jobs, the Communist authorities are suddenly afraid of being accused of breaking up "the social contract" that they spent with the population, there are 30 years out of the black years of Maoism. The principle, as defined by Deng Xiaoping and his heirs, is simple: the Party keeps an authoritarian control over the entirety of powers but undertakes, in return, to make citizens more rich, or even more "happy". Despite some severe clashes, this Pact has so far worked rather well. The average standard of living of the population has continued to increase, a middle class was formed and hundreds of millions of rural people were derived from "poverty". The "Chinese dream" became a reality. But since a few months, several incidents have come crack this apparent "harmony".

The crisis is invited in the media. After force-fed the public of a fresh propaganda, they shyly begin to evoke the strikes of the province of Guangdong where of workers of plants of toys or textile demonstrate violently against the massive layoffs. Sanya, Canton or even Chonqging, are the taxi drivers reported that they are taken by the throat and burned cars. In Gansu, the peasants, the tears in their eyes, tell before the cameras how corrupt local authorities have stolen them their land.

These "social movements" are not new. In 2005, Beijing had, for example, pleaded 84.000 more than... 230 per day on average. But this fall, they took flesh on the orders of the party. Fearing the spread of rumours, the Chinese Government has chosen a few weeks ago, for controlled communication and allowed, for the first time, its media to report freely on social tensions. The anger of the people must be able to express themselves. Pressure must be evacuated.

For the same cameras, power staged its compassion and its reactivity. In early November, the Chinese public and could discover, in a long unpublished direct, Bo Xilai, one of the members of the CCP Politburo and patron of the Party of the city of Chongqing, to talk of taxi drivers in his town who organized a wildcat strike. These meetings with the people of multiply. Everywhere, local solutions are found in these isolated and economic problems. It does not policy. The capacity and legitimacy of the party not are thus never asked.

This new strategy reflects the evolution of Chinese power and the loss of influence of the harsher trends. The "modern" line advocated by Premier Wen Jiabao is the majority. Massive and robust repression which had allowed to stifle, nineteen years ago, the challenge student and labour can no longer be applied. We are no longer in 1989.

China has changed. She has lived its technological revolution. Any movement of Anhui protest, organized by SMS, is now filmed on a mobile phone, sent by email and then put on hundreds of video sharing sites online Chinese. Censorship is there is nothing. Beijing can no longer count on the quota of the challenge. The power can no longer not to alienate the educated middle class that he was doing on the place Tian' Tiananmen Square. Yet few twenty years ago, graduates and executives be counted today by hundreds of millions. Backer of the "social contract" in Chinese, they placed the party under surveillance. Beijing can no longer, finally, take back the rest of the international community for not questioning his model of development centred on trade.

To organize its survival, the modern line of the Chinese Communist Party has integrated these upheavals and begins to speak to the people. After the media, Beijing should soon resolve to develop political and judicial institutions allowing the population to express its suffering and its critics, without having to resort to violent protests or structures. A draft of democratization that the economic crisis should precipitate.