A message appeared on an overseas dissident Web site on Feb. 19, calling on people to gather at 2pm the next day in 13 major Chinese cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Nanjing. The message was quickly spread on Twitter and Facebook, and pretty soon everyone was talking about the “Jasmine Revolution.”
Sure enough, on Sunday afternoon, people went to the suggested locations. The Jasmine Revolution had begun in China, albeit on nothing like the scale we have seen in the Middle East in recent weeks.