Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio.

I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

A sexual harassment case attended by hundreds of protesters is a revealing look into the state of feminism in China.

Gender parity is plummeting under Xi Jinping, but there seems at last to be a chance that in the courts at least women will be heard.

And celebrations of Beethoven's 250th birthday this year were muted.

We look back on his working life and how it's his more intimate works rather than the big bombastic numbers that have shown in 2020.

First up though.

Today marks exactly 10 years since Muhammad Boazizi, Tunisian street peddler, set himself ablaze to protest against the corrupt police who had confiscated his wares.

Mr Boazizi was a march till he was a hero, he is a symbol. I thank him because he freed me of my fear.

His self-immolation is widely seen as the spark that ignited the Arab Spring, a wave of revolutionary protest that swept across the region.

That's the strongest thing in here mixing with the smell of tear gas. I know this is the first Arab revolution of the 21st century, but it will be brutally suppressed.

Dictators who had seemed invulnerable fell, one after another, in Tunisia, then Egypt, and later Libya and Yemen.

I never feel the such happiness now.

But the revolutions didn't lead to the democratic outcomes that were so hoped for.

It's hard to remember now, but the Arab Spring 10 years ago started as this moment of tremendous hope and unfettered optimism for people across the Middle East who were eager to overthrow the dictators who had ruled their countries for decades.

Greg Carlstrom is the economist's Middle East correspondent.

It was this wave of revolutionary fervor that began in Tunisia and swept to Egypt and then across much of the Middle East.

But unfortunately, that initial euphoria soon gave way to a very reactionary period and the political systems with one exception across the region failed to transform for the better.

And what's the one exception?

Fittingly, the exception was Tunisia where this began in December of 2010. It emerged from the Arab Spring with a democracy, a fragile one, to be sure.

And it's a country that is still struggling with a stagnant economy and with some very sharp political divisions, but it has become a genuinely democratic society with fair elections, with political freedom.

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