Beijing, China (CNN) -- If organizers planned big protests in China to echo those in the Mideast and North Africa, they failed.
On Saturday microbloggers passed around tweets calling for protests at 2 p.m. (0600 GMT) Sunday in a dozen major Chinese cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. But no specific place was cited until several hours beforehand.
In Beijing, the place was supposed to be in Wangfujing, a typically busy shopping street less than a kilometer from Tiananmen Square.
Wangfujing may have been a perfect place to trigger a mass action. The four-lane street is a designated pedestrian street, with thousands of people walking there at any given business hour; no cars and buses are allowed. For decades it has been a favorite shopping district, especially for out-of-town Chinese and foreign tourists. (Locals prefer to shop elsewhere.)
At around 2:15 p.m., according to CNN's Tomas Etzler, who saw the scene, a large presence of police -- uniformed and in plain clothes -- mingled with a gaggle of foreign journalists and scores of people carrying digital cameras. Soon they gathered a group of onlookers from the usual traffic of shoppers and tourists.
Around this time, a young man started arguing with the police.
It is not clear whether the event was related to the planned protest or "performance art."
Most of the crowd dispersed after an hour.
Security officials exercised restraint in handling the scene, Etzler said.
Around Tiananmen Square and Zhongnanhai, the seat of China's government, there was significantly more -- but not massive -- security presence. Tourist traffic on Tiananmen Square appeared normal, with a couple Chinese tourists seen taking pictures in front of the Zhongnanhai front gate, watched by half a dozen police officers.
In Hong Kong, at the same hour, police outnumbered 30 demonstrators outside the gates of the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government. Leung Kwok Hung, a lawmaker nicknamed "Long Hair," told the tiny crowd that the demonstration was the first in Hong Kong in support of China's "Jasmine Revolution" and would not be the last.
He led the group in chanting slogans against the Chinese Communist Party and the crackdown on activists, including lawyers and human rights advocates, in the mainland.
Afterwards, some in the crowd made paper airplanes of their signs, which featured jasmine flowers, and threw them and paper funeral money over the fence onto the grounds of the liaison office. A security officer responded by loudspeaker, saying that if the protesters did not stop, he would file an official complaint.
The protest ended after an hour, all in all a nonevent.
Even though these attempts to initiate protests showed little traction, they have apparently made Chinese authorities more nervous.
A day before the planned protests, police reportedly detained scores of people, including lawyers and human rights advocates, in Beijing and other major cities.
Beijing has appeared to step up the filtering and control of the internet since the outbreak of protests in the Arab world. Search functions for words like "jasmine" and "Egypt" are blocked on certain sites like Sina Weibo and Renren, a clone of Facebook, suggesting the leadership's wariness for similar calls for change.
Read about how microbloggers deal with 'Great Firewall' challenges
Twitter, Facebook and You Tube are regularly blocked in China, even though savvier internet users could overcome the firewall with a VPN, or virtual private network. The popular Sina Weibo microblogging service is erratic, with retweeting and the posting of photos blocked.
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More Protests in Chinaby ChinaForbiddenNews5,588 views
Oh, I dont blame ALL the people, again, its a sad fact. I am also not proud of Swiss people voting against mosques, it was the MAJORITY that voted against it, why? Because of their fear, yet I am bold enough to stand up and be ashamed and irritated by these people. No matter if they are my "fellow" people or not. I do not draw boundaries! There is no nationalist mindset! I agree that there are people here whos decisions are made by the influence of fear and this is also the case in the USA.
KimIsIll 7 months ago
@KimIsIll I would think someone who appreciates the philosophies of Terence Mckenna to view things less black and white. I agree with you more than you think but I just dont like the vague brush that youve put over so many people through what youve been saying. Stupidity is rampant and i realize this but try to avoid clumping them with intelligent people who dont at all think the way you claim them to think.
brefinburgs 8 months ago
@brefinburgs Nope, neighter angry nore blind my friend. We should first take care of our on shit here in the west before we judge upon others ;-) Just kinda like people to piss off, some people wake up after they got angry and researcherd for a while!!!
KimIsIll 8 months ago
@KimIsIll So angry........so blind..........
brefinburgs 8 months ago
@brefinburgs Dude, your a quite ill individual. Arrogant? If people would start calling my country / and its people stupid, dumb and lazy and our politicians hyenas and modern neocolonizers, I WOUD DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT AND FIGHT FOR OUT IMAGE. Now starting fights with people who think differently MAKES YOU not just arrogant and ignorant, it makes you dumb and look like a fool too. Now, I am not going to waste my time anymore over here. You got to be a teenager, the way you think and write.
KimIsIll 8 months ago
@KimIsIll So you're not talking about all Americans youre just talking about most (150 million)! I was being nice and just calling you ignorant but now i realize youre just another asshole who hates other countries because you know so little of the complexity of the world and the people who try to live happily in it. Keep on living, assuming all you want about others based off of what small handfuls of people do and say....blind to complex and capricious world that you love to simplify. Peace.
brefinburgs 8 months ago
@KimIsIll You fundamentally don't understand that you cant label huge amounts of people with zero knowledge of them. You cant even say most americans because you don't know them. You are going off your own bias and personal life experiences. You cant use news, media and others you know as evidence when you're talking about this many people. And I'm not bothered, I disagree with your'e narrow-minded and bias assumption of Americans. Not because i like America, but because you are so wrong.
brefinburgs 8 months ago
@brefinburgs And again, read first before you answer, I did never put all Americans into the same pot! Again, I got good buddies from the USA who are intelligent and objective enough to rationally make up their mind. Most of the Americans fear China and still cant get over Russia and this is a fact, deal with it. If you are bothered by than get active and do something against it.
KimIsIll 8 months ago
@brefinburgs The majority of American people are just to dumb and lazy to even read about their own history! They rather believe Fox News, CNN... you name it, instead of researching and reading creditable literature! Shallow and dumb ass lazy cause most of you guys dont care about it. The simpler the better, its like you guys dont have patience for anything. Now, READ the Chinese history, read about the Chinese culture and VISIT the country first before you start talking about it!
KimIsIll 8 months ago
@brefinburgs Well you are twisting things around. I did not say that every single American reacts that way! But you know that. Read Newspapers and look how people react on this issue by posting messages. Visit blogs, talk to people on the street. For christ sake, in Boston (7 years ago), for example, people still believed that there was a cold war going on between Russia and the USA! Most of YOU guys are ignorant and I'll tell you why:
KimIsIll 8 months ago