Bo Jintao nodded from his seat as his deputy presented the data to the Politburo Standing Committee. The seven of them were in session, in their formal council room in the heart of the Zhongnanhai complex. Bo Jintao sat just to the right of the head of the table. At the very head was a tall, lean man; old, but erect of posture; with a strong face, piercing black eyes – Bao Zhuang, the nominal President of China and General Secretary of the Party.

The pretty face, as Bo Jintao thought of the man. The one man in recent history who’d ascended to power on the basis of popularity. The man who’d carefully juggled the middle ground between the radical technophiles and his own rational conservatives while their truce held.

“Let a Billion Flowers Bloom!” Bao Zhuang read from one of the protest signs on the display. His voice was deep and rich, even in his eighties; a voice that comforted China; a voice of both wit and authority. “I haven’t heard that in some time.” Bao Zhuang sounded amused at what he saw. The President often sounded amused, even now, after all his true power had been stripped away with the dissolution of the truce and the purge of the technophiles. His charm, his handsome looks, even in old age, his eloquent speech – they’d brought him everything.

“And there,” Bao Zhuang pointed at the screen and went on, drily. “There’s my face on a sign. And another of Sun Liu. Quite a few of Sun Liu, actually.” He turned to Bo Jintao. “I don’t see any pictures of you out there, Bo.”

Information Minister Fu Ping spoke up. “With all respect, the content of the signs is irrelevant. We are effectively filtering all of this from the net.”

Bao Zhuang turned to the Information Minister and raised an eyebrow. “Oh? And are you filtering people’s lips and tongues as well? Their eyes and ears?”

Fu Ping shrugged airily. “We don’t have that capability, yet.”

Bo Jintao unfolded his hands in the space in front of him, spreading them palms up.

“And that is the problem,” Bo Jintao said. “Word has spread. Unrest is spreading…”

“Why have these protests been allowed to persist?” The voice was sharp, strident, overly loud. It cut into a pause so short in his words that it could very nearly be taken for cutting him off. Bo Jintao flicked his eyes over.