re: #384 Romantic Heretic

My favorite local columnist wrote about China in this context this morning.

China ripe for discontent.

I think that comparison is a pretty big stretch. Chinese attitudes towards their government are dramatically different from citizens in ME dictatorships:

A 2010 Pew survey shows that close to 90% of Chinese are satisfied with how things are going.

pewglobal.org

From 2008:

As they eagerly await the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese people express extraordinary levels of satisfaction with the way things are going in their country and with their nation’s economy. With more than eight-in-ten having a positive view of both, China ranks number one among 24 countries on both measures in the 2008 survey by the Pew Research Center’s Pew Global Attitudes Project. These findings represent a dramatic improvement in national contentment from earlier in the decade when the Chinese people were not nearly as positive about the course of their nation and its economy.

pewglobal.org