Good Reads: When to shelve 'Arab Spring' jargon, and China's 'little emperors'

With so many North African rebellions falling short of their goals, has the term 'Arab Spring' lost its usefulness? And since when did China's young people become obsessed with 'lifestyle' issues?

One of the services that newspapers still provide is in telling readers when the conventional wisdom they take for granted is wrong. Today?s Good Reads focuses on a number of stories that challenge an educated reader's conventional notions about everything from the ?Arab Spring? to the intimidating work ethic of today?s Chinese youth.

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As Egyptians vote today in their first parliamentary elections since the Arab Spring movement, there are calls to finally shelve that shorthand phrase, ?Arab Spring.?

The objection is not merely about calendars. Yes, it is November, a month generally associated with autumn in the northern hemisphere. The real problem with Arab Spring, according to some analysts, is that it suggests that the task of revolution is complete, finished, khallas. And as Foreign Policy?s David J. Rothkopf and the Monitor?s Dan Murphy point out, the collection of street rebellions that sparked across North Africa is only in the beginning phases of transforming their societies from autocracies controlled by corrupt elites. Even calling them the ?2011 Rebellions? might be wildly optimistic.

Mr. Rothkopf puts it well here:

In every place, entrenched elites squirm and dig in their heels and try to cling to the privileges and the economic bounties they have controlled for so many decades.

It's no longer Spring, nor is it even Summer any more. And while the reforms sought by brave protesters throughout the region hold the promise of rebirth that made the term Arab Spring so apt, this torturous process will clearly go on not just through the Winter to come, but for years and years. To expect otherwise is to be unrealistic. To hope for the swift transformations that came to Eastern Europe two decades ago will only bring disappointment.

So while there is no question that Very Big Men were swept from power in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, and that some Very Big Men are quaking in their Florsheims in Bahrain, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and even in Syria, the overall structure of power throughout the Middle East has largely remained the same. Democracy is not a spring fashion; it?s a lifetime of duties and responsibilities and occasional pleasures.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/csmonitor/globalnews/~3/08di-ca2Kb0/Good-Reads-When-to-shelve-Arab-Spring-jargon-and-China-s-little-emperors

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