The riots last weekend in Guizhou province – an estimated 30,000 people converging on a police station to protest the alleged cover-up of a teenage girl's rape and murder – illustrate something important about China today. In the United States, we generally like our local governments, our mayors and even our city councils. But we’re deeply split about the feds. In China, it’s the other way around. No one trusts the local potentate. The local cops? Worse than dogs.

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One of the most interesting blips in the Guizhou riots was the release of a relatively in-depth Xinhua News Agency report on the clashes. It appeared on the Chinese web and then vanished as the government moved to quash any real reporting on the incident. I include it here in full:

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I received this e-mail reply to my last blog post about the Guizhou riots from Michael Anti (the 'government name' used by Zhao Jing, a gifted analyst of things Chinese). Big changes in the Guizhou riots. This letter puts the events in context.

John,

I saw your blog and agree with you. People do believe some Beijing-based blue-skyish judge will fly there to save them from local thugs. And this time it works. Shi Zongyuan, Party Boss in Guizhou Province, a de-facto imperial envoy sent by Beijing, is purging almost all the top officials in Weng'an County. This blue-sky show turns a risk into a success, again.

Should the United States be selling weapons to Taiwan now that Taiwan and China are getting closer? This is a nettlesome question that the Bush administration doesn’t want to answer, at least until the president returns from the Olympic Games in China in August.

The Post’s Glenn Kessler reported recently that Bush administration officials were delaying a long-promised $11 billion deal which include 30 Apache helicopters, 60 Black Hawk helicopters, eight diesel-electric submarines and four Patriot air defense missile batteries. The administration has also refused, Kessler reported, to accept a "letter of request" from Taiwan for 66 F-16 C/D fighters – which would cost an additional $5 billion.

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The Chinese are coming, the Chinese are coming!

Chinese tourists have started arriving in Taiwan as the first routine direct flights are now operating between mainland China and the island. Taiwan's tourism industry is hoping the number of tourists will reach 3,000 per day.

This is a major step forward in the relations between the two sides. (Note to American hawks: not much chance of a war now guys...) It's also a major step forward in the cultural interaction between these two very, very different societies.

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My thoughts on China's superpower potential, or lack of it, are in the Washington Post's Outlook section this week, here.