By Jason Miks
I wrote at the weekend about the rumors that have been circulating about the possibility of a coup in China, talk that has prompted the government to shutter more than a dozen websites seen as facilitating the rumors. I asked June Teufel Dreyer, a professor of political science at theUniversity of Miami and an expert on the Chinese military, for her take on what’s been going on.
She told me:
“Since the rumor mill was full of reports of tanks in the street, even though no one claimed to have personally seen any of them, I imagine that the denizens of Zhongnanhai (Chinese Communist Party headquarters), always nervous about public opinion, sought to reassure both army and civilians that the rumors had no basis in fact. If tanks really were in the street, People’s Liberation Army people must have been driving them, hence the army was ipso facto involved, hence…you can fill in the rest.
Read the full story at The Diplomat