Matthew Forney has a very interesting op-ed in today’s New York Times about the loyalty Chinese youth show towards the Chinese government and how unlikely it is to find seeds of dissent in the educated elites in China. Though Forney doesn’t go into it, the same loyalty seen inside China is likely even heightened amongst Chinese students pursuing graduate degrees in the West.  Forney’s analysis points towards a tremendously successful state-run pedagogy that teaches Han Chinese that they are ascendant victims and outside forces critical of China (Tibetans, human rights groups) are not to be treated seriously. In this regard, it’s clear that the Chinese government has created a brilliant propaganda machine that reaches into the educational system and ensures that dissent is less likely today than it was twenty years ago.

The main problem that this creates down the line for China is that it is never shocking that elites are complacent under the current regime. They are, after all, elites. The economic underclass in China, however, does not necessarily harbor the same feelings of ascendancy. China has averaged over 75,000 annual instances of mass protest in recent years – coming almost entirely from laborers, farmers, and fisherman. Nationalism may help shift the underclass’ attention off of their economic woes, but it’s hard to imagine a situation where internal political turmoil in mainland China originate from the educated elites and not the working class.