President Xi Jinping wants his people to know that the greatest threat to China is an insidious export from the West — ideas that could lead to a color revolution.

"The one non-neglectable factor [in the development of] color revolutions in these countries is the spreading of Western ideology, especially from the US," Xu Songwen of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences wrote Sunday in The People's Daily (via the South China Morning Post).

The People's Daily is a Chinese Communist Party paper known to reflect the sentiments of Xi's regime.

Xu wasn't alone either. In the same issue, four other academics also shared their thoughts on the dangers of color revolutions. The message was clear. There will be no nonviolent political movements in China. There will be no regime change. This will not be Lebanon or Ukraine in 2005. This will not be the Middle East in 2011.

Don't even think about it.

That's where the danger is, after all — in the thinking.

China has been systematically shutting out Western ideals from research centers, school curriculums, and higher learning for some time now, but it is rare to see these thoughts broadcast by a government mouthpiece.

The basic gist of all of the papers in Sunday's People's Daily is fairly simple. It's like this: The proliferation of Western democratic ideals are a Cold War tactic that helped bring about the end of the Soviet Union.

The ideas bring unrest and discontent to populations and ultimately lead to bloodshed. They also tend to end in failure (see: Arab Spring). Those who foment this kind of unrest are enemies of the state.

There is "a high price to pay for nations that fall into the trap of color revolutions," one article said, according to the South China Morning Post.

Besides, a People's Daily commentary that ran Friday said, the Chinese Communist Party is "rigid enough to protect against threats, and resilient against internal problems and external shocks."

So don't even try it.

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China is taking a play right out of Russia's book with this one. In March, The Security Council of Russia railed against the US security strategy, writing: "In relation to Russia, there is a high probability of the US using extensively advanced means for 'color revolutions' to eliminate unwanted political regimes."

So where do color revolutions start?

Aside from schools and research centers, they start on the internet. The People's Liberation Army knows that all too well, having released a chilling memo last month that said "the internet has become the main battlefront for struggle in the ideological area."

Western hostile forces and a small number of "ideological traitors" in our country use the network, and relying on computers, mobile phones and other such information terminals, maliciously attack our Party, blacken the leaders who founded the New China, vilify our heroes, and arouse mistaken thinking trends of historical nihilism, with the ultimate goal of using "universal values" to mislead us, using "constitutional democracy" to throw us into turmoil, use "color revolutions" to overthrow us, use negative public opinion and rumours to oppose us, and use "de-partification and depoliticization of the military" to upset us.

Hours after these papers appeared in The People's Daily, Hong Kong authorities said they had taken nine people into custody for potentially attempting to plan an attack on a legislative building on the island. Officials think they may advocate "localism," or the belief that the mainland should stay out of Hong Kong affairs, according to The New York Times.

Bad timing.

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