Global Voices Online

In John's round-up of Chinese bloggers' responses to the Saffron Revolution, he mentioned that some Chinese bloggers used "this incident as an opportunity to reflect on the state of China's own democratic movement."

Some of them even link the Saffron Revolution to the political disturbance of Beijing in the 1989's summer.

Here is an example. A post Myanmar's Today on TianYa.cn reads,

你们吃人民给你们的食物。你们却杀戮人民、杀害僧人！

曾经，有些人吃人民的乳汁，当人民的子弟兵，却杀戮xuesheng。

You are eating food given to you by the people. Yet you kill people and you kill the monks!

At one time, some men ate the people's milk, became the people's army, yet they killed xuesheng (Students).

To avoid censorship, the author used PinYin for the word Student instead of Chinese characters.

It is not easy to find similar posts on the Chinese internet now. As the 17^th Party Congress is approaching, most of the Chinese web sites have tightened up their filters.

However, Chinese are good at expressing themselves implicitly.

A netizen, personating the Myanmar Daily Editorial, wrote a post A Clear-cut Stand Against The Myanmar Unrest, imitating the tones and styles of the People's Daily Editorial.

…

全国僧侣、全国人民必须清醒地认识到，不坚决地制止这场动乱，将国无宁日。这场斗争事关缅甸振兴和国家建设的成败，事关国家民族的前途。

…

All the monks and the people shall realize that if we do not stop the unrest resolutely, there will be no peace in the country. This battle is concerned with the revitalization of Myanmar and the success of nation-building. It is vital to the future of the nation.

Replacing the words Myanmar and Monks with China and Students, you get the message.

Many Chinese readers found this article interesting and cross-posted it on different BBSs and Blogs. But the intention of this article is too obvious to the web sites' moderators. It disappeared from most of the big BBSs and blog sites. Still, readers can find pieces of this article hidden scatteredly in some comments of BBSs or Blog posts.

Some netizens took more complicated routes to get their voices across.

A post on KDNet.net, The Iron Evidence of America Interfering Myanmar Internal Affairs – Let's Protest Together!, has generated many responses from the readers.

The author called on the readers to protest against the US.

想干涉下美国内政的就跟贴干涉好了，我搂主大大的欢迎！

Those who want to interfere the internal affairs of America please post your follow-ups here. I greatly welcome.

It looks like a post from the Anger Youth, buried in some other nationalistic posts. But if you read carefully, you will find something interesting. Responding to Bush's statement on the situation in Burma, the author wrote,

我呼吁秉持砖制和奴才价值观的人们颠覆美国布什政府的狰荡要求。

I call on those who embrace the values of autocratic and flunkeyism to overthrow the Bush Administration's hideous request.

Many readers applauded the author in their comments.

From this cat and mouse game, we can see that the monks' protest in Myanmar is not only a foreign issue but also an internal issue to the Chinese government.

Posted by Jacky