Rebecca MacKinnon has an interesting post today:

Xiao Qiang of China Digital Times has now posted his excellent essay originally written for the Wall Street Journal about how the role of technology in China’s recent anti-Japanese protests. The government certainly allowed these protests to happen, and even encourages the rise of anti-foreign and especially anti-Japanese nationalism in Chinese cyberspace as a way of deflecting people’s frustrations away from their own government. Nonetheless, Xiao believes that the internet and wireless technology that made these protests possible will ultimately do more to break down the Communist Party’s control – despite all the impressive efforts to control and filter what Chinese people can see and do on the internet.