Locals (the ones who know about it, anyway) indicate that L|u X|aobo’s case is hardly the worst: at least he got a “trial,” they note, and that didn’t really use to happen. Assume that actual reform is taking place in an authoritarian state. If the reform includes (or is contemporaneous with) open flow of information, might more negative signals be sent, even though in aggregate the overall situation could be improving? This would be problematic if observers underestimated the degree of actual liberalization and reacted as a result of strong visibility bias and they derail the positive underlying process as a result.

Contrarian apologism for Chinese authoritarianism has been sort of in vogue over the last half year (witness p0rnstachio); personally am less sanguine about the China case, with the limited information that is available at present. It’s easy to observe both good and bad, though my vantage point isn’t all that representative anyway. Alternatively, if things systematically become worse, there is probably a threshold where people start taking action against that process. If the causal links are not obvious, this might then look like a vindication of the visibility bias as it applies to reform, when actually there are many competing processes taking place.