THE YEAR OF THE ANGRY RABBIT?

COULD THIS BE THE YEAR OF THE ANGRY RABBIT FOR CHINA?

Amid the recent wave of popular uprisings, Mark MacKinnon asks whether popular discontent fuelled by income inequality, oppression and rising inflation could push China to the brink next

Mark MacKinnon

Globe and Mail, February 26, 2011

As the lunar calendar ushered in the Year of the Rabbit, a cartoon video briefly ricocheted around the Chinese Internet. In the opening scene, a small village of rabbits is living happily when a truck selling Three Tiger baby milk pulls up and drops off bottles for all the little bunnies.

But the milk is poisonous - it makes the baby rabbits' heads explode - and soon one mother rabbit is running down to complain at the cave of the tigers (the outgoing lunar year) that rule over them. When she gets inside, the red banner hanging on the cave wall is familiar to anyone who lives in China. "Build a harmonious forest," it reads, in a clear reference to President Hu Jintao's oft-stated goal of establishing a "harmonious society."

But the tigers have no sympathy for what the rabbits are going through, mocking and beating them. Soon, the tigers are evicting the rabbits from their homes in the village and demolishing houses to make way for new developments.

Eventually, the rabbits decide that they have had enough and turn on the tigers, tearing them to bloody shreds with newly grown fangs. As the music rises from a lullaby to a heavy-metal climax, the screen is filled with a warning: "The Year of the Rabbit has come. Even rabbits bite when they're pushed."

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