China protests

Exhibit F why I don't buy into the notion that China is engaged in an inexhorable rise:

According to Mr Zhou, there were some 74,000 protests last year, involving more than 3.7m people; up from 10,000 in 1994 and 58,000 in 2003. Sun Liping, a Chinese academic, has calculated that demonstrations involving more than 100 people occurred in 337 cities and 1,955 counties in the first 10 months of last year. This amounted to between 120 and 250 such protests daily in urban areas, and 90 to 160 in villages. These figures are likely to be conservative. Chinese officials often try to cover up disturbances in their areas to avoid trouble with their superiors.

I don't believe that large-scale instability is compatible with robust economic growth, and if China's amazing growth doesn't continue we can throw all that rhetoric about it emerging as an economic and political superpower out the window. There is a solution to the widespread discontent, however: democracy, or at least steps in that direction. A democratic China would be nothing to fear. Indeed, it should be embraced if it comes to pass.