As fears of revolution grow, China rules that jasmine flowers must not

Since Tunisian revolutionaries anointed their successful revolt against the country's dictatorial president the "Jasmine Revolution," the flowering cousin of the olive tree has been branded a nefarious change-agent by the nervous men who keep the Chinese Communist Party in power.

Beginning in February, when anonymous calls for a Chinese "jasmine revolution" began circulating on the internet, the Chinese characters for jasmine have been intermittently blocked in text messages, while videos of President Hu Jintao singing "Mo Li Hua," a Qing dynasty paean to the flower, have been plucked from the web.

Local officials, fearful of the flower's destabilising potency, cancelled this summer's China International Jasmine Cultural Festival in the country's south.

Even if Chinese cities have been free from any whiff of revolutionary turmoil, the war on jasmine has not been without casualties, most notably the ever-expanding list of democracy advocates, bloggers and other would-be troublemakers who have been pre-emptively detained by public security agents, among them the artist Ai Weiwei, who remains in police custody after being seized at Beijing's international airport last month.

Less well known are the tribulations endured by the men and women who grow ornamental jasmine in Daxing, a district on the rural fringe of the capital. They say prices have collapsed since March, when the police issued an open-ended jasmine ban at a number of retail and wholesale flower markets around Beijing.

Zhen Weizhong, 47, who tends 2,000 jasmine plants on about an acre of rented land, said the knee-high potted variety were selling wholesale for about 75 cents, one-third of last year's price. "Even if I could sell them, I would lose money on every plant," he said.

Several of those who run stalls in the large Sunhe Beidong flower market, said local police had called peddlers to a meeting and forced them to sign pledges to not sell jasmine; one said she had been instructed to report to the authorities anyone even seeking to buy jasmine.

Although some vendors were given vague explanations for the jasmine freeze - that the plant was "symbolic" of those who wanted to sow rebellion - most people involved in the flower trade have been largely left in the dark about why they should behave with such vigilance.

In the absence of concrete information, rumours have taken root. One wholesale flower vendor at the Jiuzhou Flower and Plant Trading Centre in southern Beijing said he heard that the ban had something to do with radiation contamination from Japan.A young woman hawking floral bouquets at Laitai, a large flower market near the US embassy, said she was told jasmine blossoms contained some unspecified poison that was killing people. "Perhaps you'd like some white roses instead?" she asked.

Wu Chuanzhen, 53, a farmer who tends eight greenhouses of jasmine on the outskirts of the city, said other growers had said adherents of Falun Gong, the banned spiritual movement deemed an "evil cult" by the authorities, might use the flowers in their bid to overthrow the Communist Party. "I heard jasmine is the code word for the revolution," she said. Her laughter suggested she thought such concerns were absurd.