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and causing greater instability. The most remarkable fact about the tens of thousands of large-scale collective protests that occurred in the 1990s was that none of them, including those that attracted tens of thousands of participants, mushroomed into a sustained antiregime social movement or lasted for more than a few days. The security apparatus’s sophisticated methods, which ranged from crowd control to removing leadership, were in large part responsible for containing the effects of growing social unrest.140 An official directive issued by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) explicitly demanded that the security forces should emphasize timely intervention through intelligence gathering, crowd control, and containment as the main tactics in dealing with collective protests.141 An article published in the official MPS magazine in 2002 details the following methods used in containing social protest:

1. A clear division of labor: police units arc assigned distinct tasks and functions, such as intelligence collection, traffic control, site security, propaganda and videotaping, arrest, interrogation, and backup.

2. Intelligence collection and analysis: the police recruit activists, establish an extensive network of informers, and gather intelligence.

3. Preventive action: the police are placed on high alert during high-risk periods. Rural collective protest takes place mostly in the fall, when peasants are forced to pay taxes, or in the summer rainy season, when peasants arc recruited to fight floods. In the cities, social protest occurs during SOE restructuring, bankruptcy, or forcible removal of urban residents from their housing while political protest becomes more frequent on “sensitive dates.”

4. Identification of protest leaders: security officials investigate the protest activities on site, through photos, videotaping, or voice recording, to identify protest leaders and key activists.

5. Ending strikes: the police should arrest the leaders and activists and remove them from the protest site. The timing of the arrest is critical—arrests must take place only after most protest participants are physically tired and when there are fewer onlookers.

6. Quick follow-up action: the police must make decisions on detainees within twenty-four hours of the arrests. Only a few leaders and activists will be punished, while ordinary protest participants should be educated and released.142

In addition to its proven record in containing social unrest, the Chinese government has managed to suppress other sources of challenge to its rule. The best example was the crackdown on the quasi-religious group Falun Gong, from 1999 to 2000. Although shocked by Falun Gong’s surprise April 1999 siege of Zhongnanhai, the CCP’s leadership compound in Beijing, the party resorted, for the first time since 1989, to a massive campaign of repression against this group, which was arguably the most organized social movement that had emerged during the reform era. Within two years, the government had effectively destroyed Falun Gong.143

Responding to the Information Revolution

By far the CCP’s most successful effort of adaptation was the containment of the threat posed by the advent of the information revolution in the 1990s. With the emergence of the Internet and its rapid spread inside China, many observers assumed that closed authoritarian regimes such as China would find it no longer possible to control the flow of information. 144 One study demonstrated that the arrival of the Internet had a positive impact on the emergence of civil society in China.145 By mobilizing its security resources, imposing stringent regulations, jailing dissidents, and harnessing new technologies, however, the Chinese government succeeded in minimizing the political impact of the Internet while using the Internet to improve certain aspects of routine administrative functions, such as e-government.146

The CCP has received high marks in addressing the threat of the Internet. “Through measures ranging from blunt punitive actions to the subtle manipulation