And that's a wrap

Much of the hype surrounding China's Charter '08 - a democracy manifesto calling for reform of the Chinese political system - has seemingly died. It caught nearly no attention in Western media outlets (sadly), and after its initial erratic reaction, the CCP seemingly forgot all about it, too (seemingly, being the operative word here). I guess there won't be much of a grassroots rebellion, after all. 

What the Charter did, do, however, was to spark interesting debate among both Chinese and Western scholars on the future of Chinese politics. Here,  Xujun Eberlein offers an interesting summary of the buzz surrounding the Charter. Apparently, it even caught the attention of the Falun Gong:

More curious, and changing, reactions, came from Falun Gong, or FLG, a religious and political group that has been banned in mainlandChina. A search on FLG's Chinese language website Sunday came up with 100 links cheering "Charter 08," with titles such as "Reform Is Dead, Long Live Revolution!" However a click on any of those links gave only a blank page. Remnants of posts here and there indicate that FLG originally found "Charter 08" an exciting sign of the coming revolution and supported it whole-heartedly. Later, though, they made a 180 degree turn after the FLG leader deemed the manifesto not revolutionary enough, but rather a "ghost shadow" of the communist party

Be sure to read the comments section of the post too - it's nearly as fascinating as the post itself.