I think people are drawing conclusions too quickly. The current leadership is generally more pragmatic than this. There is benefit to rooting the activists.

I think people are drawing conclusions too quickly. The current leadership is generally more pragmatic than this. There is benefit to rooting the activists. There's little benefit (from the eyes of the politburo) to a brazen reprisal like this. And why would they care about what some fringe foreigner says? Chinese are much more status conscious, and the ravings of some dude on the internets doesn't carry that much weight. The younger generation is by contrast much more nationalistic and internet savvy, and a vigilante attack against an outright "Chinese are evil" article like the original is not unlikely. After all, we've seen Russian hackers doing it to Ukrainian sites.