In the past few weeks, the revolt against the Mubarak administration in Egypt has been drawing considerable worldwide attention. A few days ago, my Japanese friend living in China complained, saying that more websites had been blocked. She guessed that the civil disobedience made the Chinese government more nervous. Given that the movement have reverberated around the Middle East, it's clear that the Chinese government is afraid that a chain reaction will be set off in China. The fact that Facebook page etc.have fomented the revolt seems to make the government tighten controls on access to websites.
Actually, these things remind me of statements made by some well-known Chinese people. Although they don't know one another, they all say: "the Japanese economy has been sluggish in the past two decades, but Japanese people have never revolted nor held a massive demonstration against the Japanese government during that period. It's unbelievable but amazing. Japanese people are incredibly patient. If a recession lasted such a long time in China, there would be a revolution". They also insist that you should try to understand how difficult unifying China is before you criticize Chinese government's policies.
As you may know, China and Japan have developed a relationship of great mutual economic dependence. So, in Japan, no country is more frequently reported in the news than China. A lot of issues between the two countries are always discussed.
