I've been away for many months now, mainly for personal reasons. I'm back.

In response to the regime-toppling protests in Egypt, China's government recently banned internet seaches of the county's name. No more reseach on the pharaohs or the pyramids, kids! Presumably Bahrain, where protesters have stood their ground and won in pitched battles with the police, and Lybia, now descending into civil war and anarchy, are next on the forbidden list.

While this may seem laughable, it does point out the very real, paranoid fear that China's masters have of their own people. It also got me thinking about the relative success of China's authoritarian style of oppression, and why it hasn't yet collapsed of its own unsubtle absurdity. While I don't want to ignore other factors, much of it comes down to the simple fact of scale.

China's vastness, while itself contributing to ethnic untrest, is also an asset to the dictatorship. In the abscence of a free flow of information, people are separated by both space and their very numbers. What percentage of the billion Chinese people know what really happened in 1989 in Tianenmen Square? How many know anything about the latest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize? How many have actually discussed politics with a Uigher, a Tibetan or a Taiwanese?

Bahrain is a city-state with about 600,000 citizens (who are the primary participants in the protests), and about an equal number of foreign workers. Just imagine Chinese-style  massacres, heavy-handed censorship and torture taking place and then being successfully hushed up in a sovereign, independent Milwaukee or Nashville. Likely it would be your father who was shot, your best friend who was tortured, your sister who disappeared-- and your cousin making the arrests and doing the torturing. It can't be sustained, not for long.

Bahrain is an extreme example, but not an unreasonable one. Even larger Arab nations like Jordan, Algeria and Tunisia have quite small populations. In the region, only Turkey, Iran and Egypt are large and populous enough to make effective suppression of information possible.

Of course, one could argue that intimidation and terror are sufficient tools for a tyranny, even when everyone knows what's happening. Look at the last half of the 20th century in Albania. Look at Burma. That's true, but only has long as the facade of power doesn't show any serious cracks or ever admit defeat. Across the Arab world, the cracks are now obvious and spreading. Even if this round of protests is temporarily quashed, old resentments have been irreparably deepened and the people have seen their power. They'll be back.