8 hours ago
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The wave of protests is characterized by the use of blank paper
A new generation took to the streets in China last weekend. Many attended their first protest.
They demonstrated against the zeroCovid policy that has been in force in the country for almost three years.
In Shanghai, protesters initially remained quiet as they gathered to pay their respects to the victims of a fire at a residential building in western Xinjiang. Many believed the Covid19 measures prevented residents from fleeing the flames.
Under strict police control, they held up blank papers in protest, laid flowers on the construction site and remained silent. But then some started chanting, “Freedom! We want freedom!
As the night progressed, the crowd grew and grew bolder. On Sunday (11/27) at 3:00 a.m. local time (4:00 p.m. on Saturday, Brazilian time), they shouted, “Xi Jinping, give up! Xi Jinping, give up!”
A participant in his early 20s said he ran into the street after hearing the crowd from his room. “I’ve seen many, many angry people online, but no one has ever taken to the streets to protest,” he told the BBC.
He took his camera with him to record what he believed to be historical events. “A lot of people are here a police officer, a student, seniors, foreigners. They have different opinions, but at least they can express themselves. It is significant that they gather here. I believe this will be a meaningful memory for me.”
A young woman close to the crowd said she found the moment moving but fragile. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life in China. i feel relief We can finally come together and come together to say something we’ve wanted to talk about for a long time.”
For them, the zeroCovid policy has stolen the best years of their lives. His generation had lost income and livelihoods, education and travel opportunities. Sometimes imprisoned for months, they were separated from their families and plans and projects were postponed or cancelled. They are “angry, sad, helpless”.
Similar statements were heard in several major cities across the country this weekend. Students also rallied at Tsinghua University in Beijing, inspired by protests they saw online.
A video that went viral showed a young woman speaking quickly and anxiously into a loudspeaker. Her voice cracked as she cried, but the crowd urged her on, “Don’t be afraid!”
“If we don’t speak up because we’re afraid of being discredited, I think our people will be disappointed in us,” she said hoarsely. “As a student at Tsinghua University, I would regret it forever.”
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Students protest at China’s top university
Smart or naive?
For older Chinese, the political demonstrations, unseen in decades, brought back memories of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, also led by students demanding more freedom in China.
But some say the excitement of this generation stems from not knowing what the result of these protests was a bloody crackdown.
“The combination of youthful idealism—fearlessness without the burden of painful memories—drives young people to take to the streets to demand their rights,” said Yaqiu Wang, a researcher at Human Rights Watch in China.
Others argue that it blurs the protesters’ vision. Their youth doesn’t make them realize how much they conform to the Chinese system and its rules, says Wenti Sung, a political scientist at the Australian National University.
He marvels at the “tactical intelligence” of the demonstrators. Today’s young protesters “are the most educated generation that China has ever seen,” he says.
“They know the limits. They test those limits without crossing them,” he adds.
Protesters in Shanghai have called for Xi’s impeachment. However, at almost all rallies, protesters quashed demands they feared were too political.
Blank paper on which nothing is written became a symbol. When police ordered them to stop calls for an end to the zeroCovid policy, they responded sarcastically, calling for more testing and more restrictions.
“You only have to look at the diligence with which they prevent and minimize allegations that the Chinese government might level against them,” says Sung.
The protesters also paid attention to voices that undermined their message.
When a man in Beijing warned of “foreign influences,” he was mocked by others who shouted, “By foreign influence, do you mean Marx and Engels? Stalin? Lenin?” The Chinese Communist Party names Marxism as its guiding ideology.
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Protests in Shanghai have resulted in clashes and arrests of demonstrators
The Beijing crowd insisted, “Was it foreign forces that set the fire in Xinjiang? Was it foreign forces that overturned the bus in Guizhou?”
“Did foreign forces bring everyone here tonight?” a man called out to the crowd, then angrily replied, “No!”
“Liberal Nationalists”
Before the pandemic, young Chinese were satisfied with their future prospects. Covid19 has changed that with the imposition of restrictions and their impact on the economy.
“I can’t travel around the world, I can’t see my family,” said the young man with the camera in Shanghai. He told the BBC he feared for his mother, who has cancer and lives in the southern city of Guangzhou.
City authorities lifted Covid19 restrictions in most of their boroughs on Wednesday (30/11).
“I really want to see her. I haven’t seen her for a long time, I haven’t touched her face, I haven’t had dinner with her,” he said. “I hope that this lockdown policy will be eased as soon as possible.” He was arrested by police later in the day.
Many who have spoken to the BBC or have been seen in videos posted online say they would like to see progress in their country. During the protests, crowds kept singing China’s national anthem particularly the line urging people to defend their country.
One thing that sets this generation apart is its fierce patriotism, which has grown with China’s rise on the world stage, Sung says. He describes many of them as “liberal nationalists” who, because they believe so much in the system, blame him when things don’t work.
“The mood can very quickly change from progovernment to antisystem,” he emphasizes. But there remains a collective desire to prove their protests are legitimate and on the right side of the law.
In the video from the Tsinghua campus, after the speaker raised concerns that the protest could be hijacked by troublemakers, the crowd chanted, “No lawbreakers here! No lawbreakers here!”
Then a male voice was heard, in a worried tone: “If we lose control of this, we will be defeated.” “We have no experience with it… But we will learn little by little.”