A Chinese Communist Party-run newspaper on Saturday attacked anti-government protest movements in the Middle East and dismissed the possibility of something similar happening in China.
Such movements have brought nothing but chaos and misery to their countries' citizens and are engineered by a small number of people using the Internet to organize illegal meetings, the Beijing Daily, published by the city's party committee, said in a front-page editorial.
"The vast majority of the people are strongly dissatisfied (with the protests), so the performance by the minority becomes a self-delusional ruckus," the newspaper said.
The editorial appeared amid anonymous calls posted on the Internet for Middle East-inspired protests in dozens of Chinese cities the past two Sunday afternoons.
While drawing few outright demonstrators, the appeals have deeply unnerved authorities constantly on guard for any sign of challenges to Communist rule. Police and security agents shooed away onlookers and assaulted and detained journalists who turned up at the designated protest sites in Beijing and Shanghai.
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