A very interesting point. When I was in China I was amazed at the open disregard most Chinese people have for the law. While they do maintain a healthy fear of offending the state, they think nothing of any other crime, except how likely it is it will cause a repercussion.
Americans don't understand this, because they're the kind of people who will sit at a red light at 2AM, when they're the only car on the road, and wait for it to turn green.
In China, I saw people do and say things to cops that would have you tasered and locked up in seconds here. Not that the Chinese cops aren't brutal when the time calls for it, but it seems that only crimes that threaten the state draw violence. I saw a group of 60 odd well dressed, middle aged protesters, who may have been Falun Gong, rounded up by the People's Armed Police, and they were quite rough with them. They were herding them like cattle, with cops standing at the periphery of the group, barking like dogs and using batons on those who weren't huddling to the middle. They were all plainly terrified.
I've never seen an American react to a cop with the sheer cringing terror that I saw in those Chinese. Yet in almost every other case, people are very rude to the cops, and seem to ignore or berate them at will. We expect our cops to generally be civil with us, and we are usually civil with them. That concept doesn't seem to exist in China.
I think the fundamental difference is that an American cop who beats an imprisoned demonstrator almost to death and then has his organs sold to an organ transplant unit could get the gas chamber, whereas a Chinese cop who does the same thing could get promoted. And the Chinese demonstrators know it. Nonetheless, it is remarkable that they chose to demonstrate despite their knowledge of what could happen - it shows that they're able to control their fear. I'm not sure whether the demonstrators are losing their fear of the government or they're losing their fear of death. If it's the second, and it's a widespread phenomenon, the government should prepare for some rough waters ahead.