WASHINGTON — This is China's Year of the Rabbit. It is also a year of fateful Chinese anniversaries. The important question for the rest of the world is whether this could be a year of political unrest and social upheaval, too, in the world's most populous nation.
A few days ago, a Chinese newspaper, the Economic Times, reported that under what it called "the most conservative estimates," unemployment has now reached 9.3% in Chinese cities. The paper helpfully added: "This is far below the actual number."
And there may be worse to come. China's state-owned industries, its civil service and its army are expected to lay off millions more. Meanwhile, Chinese migrant workers whose labor is no longer needed in the countryside continue to stream into the cities, looking for jobs.
All this is taking place at an ominous time, in a year ending in "9." The last major social upheaval in China was in 1989, when huge protests for democracy and against corruption swept through Chinese cities, and the Chinese regime responded with its deadly crackdown in Beijing.
This was only the most recent of modern China's heavily freighted "9" years. The May Fourth Movement, China's tradition of student and intellectual activism, began in May 1919. The People's Republic of China was founded on Oct. 1, 1949. The Tibetan uprising and the flight of the Dalai Lama into exile took place in March 1959.
Few people outside China realize the weight of these anniversaries. This phenomenon is not merely a matter of mystical belief in numbers; it has a certain political logic too.
"It's a very Chinese thing," observes Xiao Qiang, a Chinese exile who is executive director of Human Rights in China. "The country is not a democracy. It has its own way of raising issues. June 4 [the date of the military assault on Tiananmen Square in 1989] is ordinarily a taboo subject. But if you put it as an anniversary, it's a legitimate topic of discussion."
Indeed, the 1989 tumult started under the political cover of observing anniversaries.
Ten years ago, at the time of the Chinese New Year, the dissident Fang Lizhi publicly called upon the regime to honor the anniversaries of 1919 and 1949 by releasing political prisoners. That set off a chain of events that, in the end, turned 1989 into yet another milestone year.
Of course, none of these anniversaries would matter much if economic conditions in China were tranquil. But they aren't.
