[seanmcdirmid]

The government's ability to guide public opinion is quite limited, especially in the cities with the urban aspiring young who are already quite cynical. They get their best influence by pushing nationalism buttons, but this doesn't work very well for domestic issues.

I would say rather that the CPC manages to hang on to public opinion because they are quite stable and the economy does well enough under their leadership. But all the stuff that they do to control the minds of the public (censorship, wumao's, controlling the bloggers) is pretty much a failure, they hang on despite this.