Zhou Shuguang wanted to visit his mother. Normally, that wouldn't be a problem for the 28-year-old vegetable seller, blogger and self-described occasional "citizen reporter." He'd jump on a bus and ride the twenty kilometers from Meitanba, the village deep in rural central China where he lives, to his mother's place. But Zhou, who sometimes highlights cases on his blog that pit ordinary citizens against local government authorities, hadn't considered one vital fact: the Olympic Games being held in Beijing, some 1000 kilometers away. Soon after he arrived at his parents house on Aug. 14, 'Zuola,' as he calls himself in honor of the pioneering French writer, found himself bundled into a car, driven back to his house and warned not to go anywhere until the Games were over.
With the economy also showing signs of weakness, there's little doubt that how Beijing handles issues of dissent and social instability in the post-Games period will have a lasting impact on China's future. And though not everyone shares his sunny outlook, Bequelin remains optimistic about China’s nascent civil society, whose development was temporarily put on ice in the lead up to the Games. "It's a battle in which Chinese are trying to get government off their backs," he says. And what's being fought for by people like Zhou is access to information and the right to organize. Those are "fundamental tools Chinese people need to organize their lives in a market economy," he says. "I don't see how progress on those fronts can be reversed or slowed down in the long term." TIME