Running Dog, in a post of transcendent beauty, takes the foreign media to task for misleading naive resders into believing the recent rash of rural riots (how alliterative) means the CCP is falling apart at the seams.

The implication, of course, is that there is a single force that fuels China’s rage, fomenting race riots in Henan, mass protests in Zhejiang, and the manifold outbursts of public bile that have been launched against anything from corrupt officialdom to the visiting Japanese national football team.

When it comes to reporting about China, though, everything is usually a symptom of something else, and everything is usually referred directly back to the failures of the ruling elite. It is almost as if the foreign hacks stationed in China have been infected by the opium-dream Utopianism of old-man Maoism, still expecting an ideologically bankrupt government to solve all ills.

These riots might be tearing up local governments, but no need to worry, the CCP’s grip is as iron-fisted as ever. I read the Dog’s conclusions in a state of wonder and admiration.

In what appears to be a direct response to the mayhem that seems to have descended upon China’s shit-poor hinterlands, Hu Jintao is calling for the construction of the ‘harmonious society’, ‘consisting of democracy, the rule of law, equality, justice, sincerity, friendship and vitality.’

Ominously, Hu also draws attention to the fact that a new spate of ‘independent thinking’ is also ‘posing further challenges to China’s policy makers’. ‘Negative and corrupt phenomena and more and more rampant crimes in the society will also jeopardize social stability and harmony,’ he said.

And so, what Hu giveth, Hu taketh away. Democracy works best, of course, without independent thinking, and if ‘negative phenomena’ are banned, the masses will have no choice but to just grin and bear it.

I would be laughing out loud, if I weren’t crying.

UPDATE: Running Dog is, I’m told, now being blocked in China. Can’t understand why.