Times are tough in the United States. It seems that they're even tougher in China.

An official Chinese magazine this week predicted a massive increase in protests because of the global economic downturn. It reported that 10 million people, originally from the countryside, have been fired from their jobs in factories mostly on China's eastern coast. Another 8 million people are officially registered as unemployed. Meantime, a record number of people will enter the workforce this year, including more than 6 million who have graduated from high school or college. 2009, the magazine said, will be the toughest year in China in recent memory.

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China Digital Times highlights a wonderful post by a Chinese blogger who calls herself 'Persian Xiaozhao.' It revolves around her reasons for, in the end, signing the Charter '08 call for democratization and other significant political reforms in China.

While I know that Chinese dissidents -- and the cause of human rights in China -- aren't really big issues in Washington and the United States anymore, Persian Zhao's posting should stand as a reminder of the challenges faced by right-thinking people in the People's Republic.

So is China going to get pulverized by the economic downturn or will it escape bruised but unbowed? Two perspectives reveal a lot about what we know and don't know about China. One predicts that the Communist Party's capacity to meddle in China's economy is actually that nation's secret weapon.The other cautions that during downturns big exporters (like the United States during the Great Depression and China today) usually get hit harder than the rest.

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Until today, China wonks have had little sense of how the new Obama administration will handle relations with Beijing. Today's written testimony from Treasury Secretary-designate Timothy Geithner hinted at a new, tougher tone.

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