Finally, Hu, Wen, and the rest of the top leadership have turned themselves into superb firefighters with an uncanny ability to, in Party parlance, “nip the seeds of opposition before they sprout.” Apart from sharpening the “tools of the proletarian dictatorship” by strengthening the Peoples Liberation Army and the People’s Armed Police, they have created a labyrinthine “advance warning” system to monitor threats ranging from peasant riots, urban unrest, and bird flu to the influx of Western ideas through the Internet.