Brinkley: Citizen protests making an impact in China

The way the Chinese government is behaving right now, you’d almost think it had converted to democracy. Half a dozen times in recent weeks, government officials have backed down in the face of angry citizen protests — canceling unpopular industrial projects, freeing wrongly imprisoned citizens or arresting one of its own for his reprehensible behavior.

That’s not how a communist dictatorship is supposed to behave.