Thirty years after the mass protests at Tianmen in Beijing were crushed by tanks the People's Daily online felt no need to mention the events. The paper focused on practical considerations and criticisms like the growing recognition that the massive Three Gorges Dam project has created enormous complications and threats.
That typifies the situation in China: criticism of the Communist Party's monopoly on political power is "sensitive" and impermissible. But concrete, practical critiques of significant problems is permissible.
Li Hongmei's column--English--People's Daily Online: "The State Council, China's cabinet, said on May 18 that the Three Gorges faced 'urgent problems' of geological disaster prevention, relocation and ecological protection, noted the negative impact on downstream water supplies and river transport, and vowed to restore things to order within the next eight years.The spectacular dam has been dubbed as China's most impressive man-made wonder since it came into being in 1992, second only to the Great Wall, inviting boundless respect and admiration. But it seems that, all of a sudden, 'the national pride' became a 'problem child' just overnight."
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