THE ST Patrick’s Day parade in China’s financial capital Shanghai has been cancelled amid concerns the “Jasmine Revolutions” sweeping states with authoritarian governments in the Middle East could spread to the Asian giant.
The Communist Party, staging its annual National People’s Congress in Beijing, said yesterday calls for protests in China were doomed because Chinese people treasured peace and stability.
However, it is clearly worried about the spread of anti-government sentiment, and has taken steps including stopping next Saturday’s annual parade for Irish expatriates and their Chinese friends and families in Shanghai. The parade attracts thousands of visitors every year and is part of a four-day event.
“The parade is off. We were told by the Public Security Bureau we could not have a public gathering. We’re bitterly disappointed as we spent two months working on it, but that’s life,” said one member of the organising committee who requested anonymity.
The annual parade was due to move along Nanjing Donglu, Shanghai’s most famous street, which runs past People’s Square – a site specified in online calls for citizens to take “an afternoon stroll” in a sign of passive resistance.
Organisers were refused permission to stage the parade elsewhere. The Irish community will hold a scaled-down event in the Shanghai Centre plaza.
The Beijing St Patrick’s Day parade, due to be held on Sunday, March 20th, in Chaoyang Park, a few kilometres from the city centre, will go ahead as planned.
“Over the past 30 years or more, China’s success and economic progress has been broadly recognised. The Communist Party’s leadership and government’s policies are in line with the people’s will and their hearts,” said Wang Hui, spokeswoman for the Beijing city government.
“Cool-headed people know these people have chosen the wrong place, and their ideas and plans are wrong. In Beijing we have had and will have no such incidents,” she said.
It is hard to tell what security presence is in Beijing to stop the phantom protests taking place on the Wangfujing shopping street and what is here to provide the usual heavy security for the National People’s Congress. About 740,000 police, security guards and ordinary citizens have been drafted in to provide security for the congress.
Foreign reporters have been barred from sites of would-be protests and threatened with having their residence visas revoked.