Free Speech Zone - Beijing Edition

The announcement by Beijing Wednesday that there will be "protest areas" at the Olympics, was eerily reminiscent of... well, political conventions in the US, or economic summits in Europe.

I think it's a shrewd move by the Chinese authorities. There may very well be public demonstrations at the Olympics. For foreigners -- if they manage to get in, despite the wild visa cuts that seem to be leaving Beijing hotels half-empty -- there should be relatively little fear in protesting. If you're an American protesting for Darfur, or a European protesting for Tibet, they probably won't think of doing anything too too bad to you. If you're Chinese, who knows, but I still think they'll be out there protesting. Maybe the Falun Gong people, among others.

The Chinese authorities know this and need to handle it. Creating free speech zones is perfect. They can fill the zones with pro-China stooges, if they like. And even protests within the zones still have to be permitted, so they can still say no to everyone you'd expect them to say no to. For anyone who protests in town (the zones are way out of town), they can say "look, these people are protesting in an unpermitted area!" The Western media will probably be fairly good about not being fooled by this all, but surely some media, and the all-important Chinese audience, will get the message that this is somehow a matter of the specifics of who can protest where, not a basic question of China blocking protest altogether.