You yourself said that there were 90,000 protests in China every year.
And millions of people DO travel to Beijing every year to petition the national government over issues like corrupt officials.
And if you check that Foreign Policy magazine link about the Dalian protests recently, you'll see that the government officials eventually did agree to the protestors demands.
I never claimed China was a "robust democracy" though, or even a democracy.
China is a Socialist country with a market economy, this has been true for a long time.