Mick Hartley

How Egypt is being reported in China:

The protests in Egypt are about free elections and overthrowing a longtime dictator? Not according to China's state media, which is painting them as the kind of chaos that comes with Western-style democracy.

The recent uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia are no doubt giving pause to many authoritarian regimes around the world, but nowhere else appears to be as determined to control the message as China.

Chinese censors have blocked the ability to search the term "Egypt" on microblogging sites, and user comments that draw parallels to China have been deleted from Internet forums. The People's Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Communist Party, carried only a short report Thursday saying Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak would not stand for re-election.

While there is little chance the protests could spark demonstrations in China, the extent to which the long-ruling Communist Party is censoring the story underscores how wary it is of any potential source of unrest that might threaten its hold on power.

Well, it'd certainly make a great motto for the generation of 2011:

We shall fight and we shall win,
Tunis, Cairo….and Beijing.