Tag Archives: Revolution

Has Vladimir Putin lost control of his “corruption crackdown”?

Posted by on December 6, 2012 Comments Off

But six weeks into this one, its initiator has found himself in the bind of his career. By allowing state TV to cover all the gory details of the bureaucratic bloodletting, Putin’s government seems to have only reminded Russians just how shameless and pervasive corruption has become. In one case, police claim to have found an obscure military bureaucrat, Alexander Yelkin, in possession of around $9 million in cash and four Breguet watches. Had he not been arrested on Nov. 16, he was reportedly planning to celebrate his birthday the following night with a private concert by Jennifer Lopez. Judging by the latest polls, such tales of profligacy have begun to reflect badly on the entire government — Putin included. But satisfying the public’s piqued desire for justice is hardly an option at this point. Bureaucrats at every level are already spooked by the spate of arrests, and if the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed becomes threatened, they could start to turn on Putin. And that raises the risk of a palace coup.

“He has to strike a very delicate balance,” says Alexander Rahr, a member of the Valdai Club, a forum of Russia experts that meets with Putin once a year. “He is too dependent on the boyars [feudal lords] to go chopping off their heads, but that is what the people are now demanding.”

Off with Their Heads – By Simon Shuster | Foreign Policy

Could Russia being edging closer to a revolution? Clearly, Russia is becoming less stable, not more stable.

Restive population spooks China’s Communist rulers – thestar.com

Posted by on November 4, 2012 Comments Off

The answer is not hard to find. In all likelihood, these leaders sense, either instinctively or intellectually, an impending crisis that could imperil the CCP’s survival in the same way that the French Revolution ended Bourbon rule.

Telltale signs of anxiety are already visible. Capital flight from China is now at a record high. Polls of China’s dollar millionaires reveal that half of them want to emigrate. Amid intensifying calls for democracy, China’s leader-in-waiting, Xi Jinping, reportedly met with the son of the late Hu Yaobang, a political reformer and icon of Chinese liberals. While one should not read too much into such a visit, it is safe to say that China’s next leader knows that the Celestial Kingdom is becoming unsettled.

The idea that some sort of political crisis could engulf China in the coming years may strike many — particularly western business and political elites, who have taken the CCP’s strength and durability for granted — as absurd. In their minds, the party’s hold on power seems indestructible. But several emerging trends, unobserved or noted only in isolation, have greatly altered the balance of power between the CCP and Chinese society, with the former losing credibility and control and the latter gaining strength and confidence.

Restive population spooks China’s Communist rulers – thestar.com

China: ‘System’s Legitimacy is Crumbling’

Posted by on September 25, 2012 Comments Off

“When the next generation of Chinese leaders takes over this year, they will have to deal with problems from land to environmental protests,” reports suggest. But they are more likely to resort to xenophobic populism than genuine reform, says a Wukan villager:    

The irate villager says China’s new leaders will have to deal with widespread disaffection or find “a way to shift attention by fighting a war in the South China Sea” to focus the anger of the Chinese people elsewhere.

Nevertheless, some Chinese analysts suggest, the Bo Xilai scandal has exposed the inherent fragility of an authoritarian system resting on brittle, performance-based legitimacy .

Democracy Digest » China: Wang case kills reform hopes, shows ‘system’s legitimacy is crumbling’

Another suggestion that revolution is in the air.

Thousands march in anti-Putin rally in Moscow | GlobalPost

Posted by on September 15, 2012 Comments Off

Protesters shouted slogans like, “Russia without Putin” and waved signs saying things like, “Putin is a parasite,” according to Reuters.

Russia Today said activists also held signs reading, “Rights aren’t given, they are taken,” “‘Russia is a secular country, no to religious obscurantism” and “Anarchy: Dreams come true.”

The group intends to march near the Kremlin in what is anticipated to be one of the largest opposition protests in recent months, said Reuters.

The Kremlin has dismissed the event, saying it does not represent national sentiment. 

Thousands march in anti-Putin rally in Moscow | GlobalPost

The Instability of China’s Authoritarian Regime | Epoch Times

Posted by on September 15, 2012 Comments Off

The CCP’s mantra “stability above everything else” is a reflection of its instability. 

Judging from the current political, social, and economic difficulties, China is on the eve of great political change. 

Not only will the Bo Xilai/Wang Lijun “Chongqing incident” have a difficult aftermath, the power distribution battle around the 18th Party Congress has turned white-hot. There are rumors of an assassination attempt on Xi Jinping, the presumed next Party head. In addition there are territorial disputes, intensifying social conflicts, and serious confrontations and distrust between the people and the authorities. 

Some worry that if the CCP were to collapse it would lead to large-scale unrest. But in view of China’s current situation, I believe that will not occur. There are three main reasons: 

One, China’s instability originates from the CCP’s own internal problems and manifests as the CCP’s internal struggles, rather than coming from outside factors. 

The Instability of China’s Authoritarian Regime | Thinking About China | Opinion | Epoch Times

Putin vs. the People: A showdown is looming

Posted by on July 27, 2012 Comments Off

As the level of discontent rises in Russia, Moscow finds itself significantly short of well-trained riot police. The military and other police suffer from “low moral sensibility and dubious riot training.” In short, Moscow is in trouble and so is Russia.

Putin and his cohorts in the Duma seem to see themselves as being besieged by enemies from all directions: in Syria, Central Asia and the Caucasus, while paid foreign agents try to occupy the streets and squares of Moscow. Putin brushed aside criticism of the NGO foreign agents legislation by publicly reiterating his long-held opinion that those who take foreign money dance to a foreign tune. Leading opposition figures have been harassed recently, their homes have been searched, and the number of jailed dissidents has been growing. The stage seems to be set for a showdown.

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Putin will not meet the unrest with adequate reforms, while the repressive alternative is lacking in strength or credibility. As soon as the moral and physical fortitude of the overstretched OMON begins to crumble, control of Moscow may be lost. Since Russia is overcentralized, the loss of Moscow inevitably means the loss of the entire country. In Russia, just like in France, revolutions are decided in the capital only, while the provinces gaze on in bewilderment.

Putin vs. the People | Opinion | The Moscow Times

Putin is Playing with Fire

Posted by on June 27, 2012 Comments Off

And Putin’s return to the Stalinist practice of sending police to search opponents’ homes, combined with his attempts to ignite hostility between social groups – for example, between provincial Russia and the urban middle class – is deepening antagonism and distrust among citizens. In this way, Putin’s regime intensifies political dissenters’ longing for retaliation – thereby hindering peaceful change.

Already, longstanding tensions have begun to boil over; tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets since Putin’s 2011 announcement that he would reclaim the presidency. His return to the Kremlin has incited some of the largest protests that Moscow has seen since the 1990’s. And, while popular demonstrations have diminished – largely as a result of draconian new anti-protest laws – the more conflict accumulates beneath the surface, the more devastating the eventual explosion will be.

By censoring the media, discrediting moderate opposition, and provoking popular discontent, Putin is playing with fire. It is impossible to predict when Russia will detonate, but the system’s fissures are undeniable – and growing.

“Putin’s Ironic Potential” by Lilia Shevtsova | Project Syndicate

Pressure is building in Russia toward revolution. The timing is impossible to know, but the direction is clear. Putin is in trouble.

Putin may be more vulnerable than you think

Posted by on June 23, 2012 Comments Off

While the legislation has been met with outrage, no one, so far, seems particularly cowed (despite a wave of prose-cutions related to the May 6 unrest). Instead, the government is seen as running scared. On a Moscow radio program, political consultant and former Putin adviser Gleb Pavlovsky described the new law as a “hysterical fit” proving that “the government has lost the ability to govern.”

At the Washington conference, Kara-Murza noted that “9 or 10 years ago the Putin regime could do anything it pleased?—?shut down TV stations, shut down opposition parties, rig elections?—?and expect apathy and silence. That time has passed; everything they do now, they have to do looking over their shoulder.” Current events seem to bear this out.

The People Versus Vladimir Putin | The Weekly Standard

Russia is at risk of a revolution. Putin can’t know the future, but he must be getting nervous about what might come.

If the world is at a tipping point, Russia is at risk of revolution, and China too, should all of us be worried about the future? The entire world order we know is at risk of collapse.

China’s Simmering Discontent: The Biggest Challenge to Social Harmony | Global Spin | TIME.com

Posted by on June 7, 2012 Comments Off

The widening gap between the rich and poor in China is turning ever more numbers of ordinary citizens into social activists. If the government wants to maintain stability, it must address the root causes of growing protests — not just suppress them

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And yet the country boils with discontent. Last year China averaged 500 large-scale protests per day, economist Niu Wenyuan, an adviser to China’s State Council, told an official forum in February. The death of an anticorruption investigator in police custody last June touched off riots in central Hubei province that had to be put down by military police in armored cars. In August, 12,000 mostly middle-class residents of the northeastern port city of Dalian took to the streets to call for the closure of a huge new petrochemical factory. And in December thousands of residents in the coastal village of Wukan, angered by corrupt sales of communal land, kicked out their local government, prompting a tense standoff with police. “We had made appeals to 14 different, higher government departments since 2009 but we never got an answer,” says Zhang Jianxing, a 27-year-old villager who posted photos and footage of the protests online. “So we were forced to take action ourselves. When we started the whole thing, we knew we had to succeed. We weren’t going to give up.” The Wukan demonstrations forced the Guangdong provincial authorities to order an investigation and a new village election.

China’s Simmering Discontent: The Biggest Challenge to Social Harmony | Global Spin | TIME.com

Is China becoming susceptible to a revolution?

Is it the beginning of the end for Putin?

Posted by on May 31, 2012 Comments Off

Vladimir Putin’s new presidential term is just beginning, but it increasingly looks like the beginning of the end. Whenever Russia’s people pour into the streets en masse, as they currently are doing, from that point on things never work out well for the authorities.

In 1917, Russian Emperor Nicholas II had to abdicate in the wake of mass street protests, clearing the way for the Bolshevik Revolution. In 1991, the Soviet Union – then seemingly an unbreakable monolith – collapsed in just a few months. Hundreds of thousands went into the streets to confront the hardline coup against Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika.

Now it is Putin’s turn. …

“Putin’s Final Act” by Nina L. Khrushcheva | Project Syndicate

The global financial crisis of 2008 has caused us to enter the age of upheaval. Big changes are coming. These changes may include revolution in both Russia and China.These signs and the global financial crisis indicate that the world has entered a pre-collapse state. Small events are now capable of causing massive changes to the world we know.

The Global Trends 2025 reports says we should expect discontinuities, shocks and surprises before 2025.  The international system we know today “will be almost unrecognizable by 2025″. The transition to a new system will be fraught with risks, the report says.