"Just picture 2 billion Chinese willing to stand up to their captors"
Well, I can think of one anyway...
That 'armed force' knows that it's being watched. They're helpless. If they start a Tiananmen style massacre, Syria will be more isolated than North Korea, diplomatically.
Can you imagine the headline 'Peaceful protesters hit with artillery and tanks; thousands killed' accompanied by a few pictures of dead women still clutching their Lebanese flags?
Assad would wind up as roomates with either Saddam or bin Laden, assuming the JDAMs didn't find him first.
It's not as if the Chinese people haven't been trying:
"BEIJING – In an effort to address recent unrest fed by disparate rural, ethnic, and economic tensions, China's leadership has embarked on a "harmonious society" campaign that emphasizes awareness of the country's rich-poor gap, and even tacitly suggests the nation is at a social "crossroads."
At least eight major incidents of violence and rioting have erupted in recent weeks, against a backdrop of thousands of minor incidents in recent years.
A number of the most recent mass blow ups were triggered by minor events, such as a fight or a traffic accident between haves and have-nots, before quickly escalating to involve thousands of people. The prevalence of such cases, where crowd numbers range from 500 to 10,000, suggest a reservoir of anger existing just below China's social surface, as well as a growing "consciousness of rights," say experts like Nicolas Becquelin of Human Rights in China."
...The Chinese magazine Outlook put the 2003 figure of local disturbances about 58,000, involving an estimated 3 million persons.[/snip]
In China, stresses spill over into riots - Christian Science Monitor (11/22/2004)