Smelling Jasmine in the Arab Spring

On January 14, 2011, Mohammed Bouabizi, a Tunisian street vendor, set himself a blaze in an act of protest which would trigger a region wide popular revolution which toppled governments in Tunisia and Egypt, while triggering deeper civil conflicts in Syria and Libya. On January 14, Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali fled Tunisia for Saudi Arabia following several intense weeks of national unrest over the nation’s deteriorating economic conditions and demand for political reform. These historic movements reverberated across the region.

A month later on February 11, Hosni Mubarak was ousted by the Egyptian military after 29 years of rule in the wake of high-visibility mass protests. Mubarak’s ousting was followed by Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, and a bloody civil war to unseat Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Collectively, these movements ultimately transformed the trajectory of the region for more than a decade toward geopolitical struggle and contestation. 

The collective aspirations of many who joined the political movements seeking a more democratic future and stronger economic opportunity have largely been quelled by the resurgence of authoritarian governments who eventually reemerged as the primary victors of the Arab Spring, promising stability through subjugation and strict social and political control.

Many of the structural regimes, on which previous leaders overthrown during the league relied to sustain their power, remain in the present. For example, in Egypt, the military recovered the presidency and regained control of the state with the rise of Abdel Fateh Sisi. Meanwhile, in Yemen, Libya, and Syria, protracted civil wars have wrought destruction, extensive suffering, and loss of life. 

The success of the Tunisia movements - dubbed the “Jasmine Revolution” was felt across the region, offering hope that Tunisia’s success could be modeled in protest movements occurring across the region. While much media attention focused on the unraveling of political order in the Middle East, Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution caught some steam in Beijing among young activists inspired by the democratic movements in the region.

While no such major movements emerged in Beijing, the state took careful notice. Some Chinese officials and policy officials pointed the finger at the West for forcing the revolutions “eastward.” Watching closely the rapid onset of political change, Chinese leaders were worried and sought to reduce exposure to potential spillover. State officials responded to the Arab revolutions by blocking news of the unfolding events and censoring netizens ability to search keywords. 

Some have speculated over the potential drivers of China’s regime insecurity over the potential for the spread of unrest. One suggestion is that Chinese state leaders feared the potential risk of a “color revolution” in China, as occurred in Georgia and Ukraine less than a decade earlier. The potential for a spillover of the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, in this view, could inspire mass protests in China, exposing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and undermining its legitimacy. Others have pointed also to the timing of the revolutions ahead of the nation’s leadership succession, occurring in 2012, as well as a push by the security establishment to reinforce its political positioning.

There is a broad consensus however that the state sought to avoid wide-scale protests or any such actions which would threaten the legitimacy or stability of party control of the state. As Bruce Dickson so eloquently put it, “the Lessons of the Arab Spring are that small isolated events can explode into nationwide protests…that can doom the regime…lessons not lost on CCP leaders. In May 2011, the People’s Daily, a state-run English language newspaper, ran a paper titled “China is not the Middle East” to signal to an international audience that “any vain scheme to divert Middle East turmoil to China is doomed to fail.” In this article, the author accused “people with sinister ulterior motives both inside and outside China attempt to…’fan flames’” in order to “make China chaotic.”

The Arab Spring revolutions left a major impression on China’s leadership.The lesson - when regimes lose touch with their people, they become “isolated” and “self-satisfied.” After assuming the reigns of the country, Xi would seek to learn from this experience and chart a new foreign policy toward the Middle East tailored to bolster the stability of Arab governments through a national development approach which would, in theory, raise the living standard of Arab populations and enable easier social control through the introduction of new technologies. This approach would expand and grow over the next decade.