Is the Middle East Protests having an effect on China?

Call it wishful thinking if you want but after reading and article titled China drops death penalty for some economic crimes by Associated Press writer Gillian Wong, it is worth thinking about.  In the article it is described that “China dropped the death penalty for more than a dozen nonviolent crimes Friday and banned capital punishment for people over the age of 75 in largely symbolic moves that are not expected to significantly reduce executions.”  It was also reported that “the committee also widened the scope of punishment for subversion to include the funding of domestic and foreign groups to commit crimes that endanger national security. It approved stiffer penalties for food safety violations, and made it a crime for employers to hold back workers' wages.”  While this may not be “the smoking gun” to experts who know much better than I about these sorts of things, it does cause me to wonder.  I wonder because some of these things are the exact things demanded by those who have been protesting in other countries.

Knowing that China is a Communist country and has strict control over what is brought into that country or released, one has got to figure that some way or another China is not that isolated that its people are not aware of what is going on around them.  We all are aware of the excessive human rights violations that China has become to be known for but the recent committee’s actions on employers holding back workers wages could be the beginning to a new world order in that country.  The protests around the world may be influencing their decision to act promptly to avoid what they see taking place in the other nations.

With the rash of citizens banning together to correct wrongs done to them by their own government and other nations trying desperately to get ahead of this wave, China may be seeking to do the same.  So much history has been playing out these last few weeks and months that those of us alive to witness it may not get the full effect until many years later.  I can not help but to think that America started this strong desire for change when we voted into office our first African-American President but then I could be wrong.