#china protests

[mengjue]

What's Happening in China? The November 2022 Protests

Hello! I know that there's so much going on in the world right now, so not everyone may be aware of what is happening in China right now. I thought that I would try to write a brief explainer, because the current wave of protests is truly unprecedented in the past 30+ years, and there is a lot of fear over what may happen next. For context, I'm doing this as someone who has a PhD in Asian Studies specialising in contemporary Chinese politics, so I don't know everything but I have researched China for many years.

I'll post some decent links at the end along with some China specialists & journalists I follow on Twitter (yeah I know, but it's still the place for the stuff at the moment). Here are the bullet points for those who just want a brief update:

Xi Jinping's government is still enacting a strict Zero Covid policy enforced by state surveillance and strict lockdowns.

On 24 November a fire in an apartment in Urumqi, Xinjiang province, killed 10. Many blamed strict quarantine policies on preventing evacuation.

Protests followed and have since spread nationwide.

Protesters are taking steps not seen since Tiananmen in 1989, including public chants for Xi and the CCP to step down.

Everyone is currently unsure how the government will respond.

More in-depth discussion and links under the cut:

First a caveat: this is my own analysis/explanation as a Chinese politics specialist. I will include links to read further from other experts and journalists. Also, this will be quite long, so sorry about that!

China's (aka Xi Jinping's) Covid Policy:

The first and most important context: Xi has committed to a strict Zero Covid policy in China, and has refused to change course. Now, other countries have had similar approaches and they undoubtedly saved lives - I was fortunate to live in New Zealand until this year, and Prime Minister Ardern's Zero Covid approach in 2020-2021 helped protect many. The difference is in the style/scope of enforcement, the use of vaccines, and the variant at play. China has stepped up its control on public life over the past 10 years, and has used this to enforce strict quarantine measures without full regard to the impact on people's lives - stories of people not getting food were common. Quarantine has also become a feared situation, as China moves people to facilities often little better than prisons and allegedly without much protection from catching Covid within. A personal friend in Zhengzhou went through national, then provincial, then local quarantines when moving back from NZ, and she has since done her best to avoid going back for her own mental and physical health. Xi has also committed China to its two home-grown vaccines, Sinovac and Sinopharm, both of which have low/dubious efficacy and are considered ineffective against new variants. Finally, with delta and then omicron most of the Zero-Covid countries have modified their approach due to the inability to maintain zero cases. China remains the only country still enacting whole-city eradication lockdowns, and they have become more frequent to the point that several are happening at any given time. The result is a population that is incredibly frustrated and losing hope amidst endless lockdowns and perceived ineffectiveness to address the pandemic.

Other Issues at Play:

Beyond the Covid situation, China is also wrestling with the continued slowdown in its economic growth. While its economic rise and annual GDP growth was nigh meteoric from the 80s to the 00s, it has been slowing over the past ten years, and the government is attempting to manage the transition away from an export-oriented economy to a more fully developed one. However, things are still uncertain, and Covid has taken its toll as it has elsewhere the past couple of years. Youth unemployment in particular is reaching new highs at around 20%, and Xi largely ignored this in his speech at the Party Congress in October (where he entered an unprecedented third term). As a result of the perceived uselessness of China's harsh work culture and its failure to result in a better life, many young Chinese have been promoting 躺平 tǎng píng or "lying flat", aka doing the bare minimum just to get by (similar to the English "quiet quitting"). The combination of economic issues and a botched Covid approach is important, as these directly affect the lives of ordinary middle-class Chinese, and historical it has only been when this occurred that mass movements really took off. The most famous, Tiananmen in 1989, followed China's opening up economic reforms and the dismantling of many economic safety nets allowing for growing inequality. While movements in China often grow to include other topics, having a foundation in something negatively impacting the average Han Chinese person's livelihood is important.

The Spark - 24 Nov 2022 Urumqi Apartment Fire:

The current protests were sparked by a recent fire that broke out in a flat in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang province. (This is the same Xinjiang that is home to the Uighur people, against whom China has enacted a campaign of genocide and cultural destruction.) The fire occurred in the evening and resulted in 10 deaths, which many online blamed on the strict lockdown measures imposed by officials, who prevented people from leaving their homes. It even resulted in a rare public apology by city officials. However, with anger being so high nationwide, in addition to many smaller protests that have occurred over the past two years, this incident has ignited a nationwide movement.

The Protests and Their Significance:

The protests that have broken out over the past couple of days representing the largest and most significant challenge to the leadership since the 1989 Tiananmen movement. Similar to that movement, these protests have occurred at universities and cities across the country, with many students taking part openly. This scale is almost unseen in China, particularly for an anti-government protest. Other than Tiananmen in 1989, the most widespread movements that have occurred have been incidents such as the protest of the 1999 Belgrade bombings or the 2005 and then 2012 anti-Japanese protests, all of which were about anger toward a foreign country.

Beyond the scale the protests are hugely significant in their message as well. Protesters are publicly shouting the phrases "习近平下台 Xí Jìnpíng xiàtái!" and "共产党 下台 Gòngchǎndǎng xiàtái!", which mean "Xi Jinping, step down/resign!" and "CCP, step down/resign!" respectively. To shout a direct slogan for the government to resign is unheard of in China, particularly as Xi has tightened control of civil society. And people are doing this across the country in the thousands, openly and in front of police. This is a major challenge for a leader and party who have prioritised regime stability as a core interest for the majority of their history.

Looking Ahead:

Right now, as of 15:00 Australian Eastern time on Monday, 28 November 2022, the protests are only in their first couple of days and we are unsure as to how the government will respond. Police have already been seen beating protesters and journalists and dragging them away in vehicles. However, in many cases the protests have largely been monitored by police but still permitted to occur. There seems to be uncertainty as to how they want to respond just yet, and as such no unified approach.

Many potential outcomes exist, and I would warn everyone to be careful in overplaying what can be achieved. Most experts I have read are not really expecting this to result in Xi's resignation or regime change - these things are possible, surely, but it is a major task to achieve and the unity & scale of the protest movement remains to be fully seen. The government may retaliate with a hard crackdown as it has done with Tiananmen and other protests throughout the years. It may also quietly revamp some policies without publicly admitting a change in order to both pacify protesters and save face. The CCP often uses mixed tactics, both coopting and suppressing protest movements over the years depending on the situation. Changing from Zero Covid may prove more challenging though, given how much Xi has staked his political reputation on enforcing it.

What is important for everyone online, especially those of us abroad, is to watch out for the misinformation campaign the government will launch to counter these protests. Already twitter is reportedly seeing hundreds of Chinese bot accounts mass post escort advertisements using various city names in order to drown out protest results in the site's search engine. Chinese officials will also likely invoke the standard narrative of Western influence and CIA tactics as the reason behind the protests, as they did during the Hong Kong protests.

Finally, there will be a new surge of misinformation and bad takes from tankies, or leftists who uncritically support authoritarian regimes so long as they are anti-US. An infamous one, the Qiao Collective, has already worked to shift the narrative away from the protests and onto debating the merits of Zero Covid. This is largely similar to pro-Putin leftists attempting the justify his invasion of Ukraine. Always remember that the same values that you use to criticise Western countries should be used to criticise authoritarian regimes as well - opposing US militarism and racism, for example, is not incompatible with opposing China's acts of genocide and state suppression. If you want further info (and some good sardonic humour) on the absurd takes and misinfo from pro-China tankies, I would recommend checking out Brian Hioe in the links below.

Finally, keep in mind that this is a grass-roots protest made by people in China, who are putting their own lives at risk to demonstrate openly like this. There have already been so many acts of bravery by those who just want a better future for themselves and their country, and it is belittling and disingenuous to wave away everything they are doing as being just a "Western front" or a few "fringe extremists".

Links:

BBC live coverage page with links to analysis and articles

ABC (Australia) analysis

South China Morning Post analysis

Experts & Journalists to Check Out:

Brian Hioe - Journalist & China writer, New Bloom Magazine

Bonnie Glaser - China scholar, German Marshall Fund

Vicky Xu - Journalist & researcher, Australian Strategic Policy Institute

Stephen McDonnell - Journalist, BBC

M Taylor Fravel - China scholar, MIT

New Zealand Contemporary China Research Centre - NZ's hub of China scholarship (I was fortunate to attend their conferences during my PhD there, they do great work!)

If you've reached the end I hope this helps with understanding what's going on right now! A lot of us who know friends and whanau in China are worried for their safety, so please spread the word and let's hope that there is something of a positive outcome ahead.

[milverton]

This was such a brilliant video I subtitled it so more people can watch it. Beijing students' response last night to accusations that there are 'foreign forces' at play in this weekend's protests

'The foreign forces you are talking about – are they Marx and Engels?'

https://twitter.com/CindyXiaodanYu/status/1597247427781984257

[polyglot-thought-2]

[Mandarin->English] @xinwendiaocha 6:43 PM March 29th 2023 Tweet

Link to original tweet

—

 3月29日，在蔡英文总统下榻的纽约酒店外，有超过 200 名中国抗议者进行示威

On March 29th, outside of the hotel that President Tsai Ing-wen is staying at in New York, over 200 Chinese protestors held a demonstration

—

Please correct me if I made a mistake.

$5 translation commissions here

[surpluscornbread]

How some media progressives talk about China is WILD

China’s going through a lot of protests and there’s reasons to criticize the Chinese government. There’s even arguments that the current protests, primarily about Zero COVID policies but also talking about censorship, have decent points at this stage in the pandemic. Those are worth considering and debating. But then you get something like this from a senior editor and “progressive Montanan” Bob Brigham:

This, is insane. On many levels. First, there’s no argument that China’s population numbers would fall significantly due to COVID. Estimates are about 5 million people would’ve died without the lockdowns they’ve done which is less than .4% of their population. Huge human cost! Not much change in population.

Second, as Naomi Wu points out, there’s no argument that China is uniquely overpopulated. Density as a whole is less than a number of European states, though some large provinces in the East like Guangdong are quite dense still in the 700/sq km range putting them at about 40% of Malta’s density (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1183370/china-population-density-by-region-province/). But true, density isn’t the only thing that matters. How about water resources? Well in per capita water renewable resources, China has a similar amount to the UK and about 60% more than Germany according to the World Bank (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ER.H2O.INTR.PC). China’s forest coverage as a percent of land area is similar to Belgium (https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/forest_area/). You could think of other things like per capita emissions and there’s none of that where China is substantially higher than European countries Brigham gives a pass for. Or hell, even some US states!

What this all adds up to is fairly blatant racism because now he’s not complaining about actions of the Chinese government but the existence of Chinese people. Which if anything I’d say China’s earlier one child policy and now more relaxed two child policies deserve critique for being unhelpful interventions when birth rates drop quickly and naturally from just urbanization and women’s education being combined...two things China’s proven quite good at in recent decades! And this is combined with unhinged hatred of lockdowns far in excess of where even the protestors have been at.

Chinese people in general were in favor of lockdowns and some still are (though that number has certainly dropped more recently)! That’s why you didn’t see these protests during the rest of the past two years of them. And the lockdowns were working until fairly recently as clearly shown by China’s extremely low death toll (a death toll that is likely pretty close to accurate or at least no more wrong than anyone else’s simply because hiding millions of deaths isn’t a thing governments have ever been able to do, there are too many different threads of information to control for that).

If you want to make arguments that lockdown policies have stayed in place too long, especially since widespread adoption of vaccines, that’s a point that’s worth considering. That’s what the protestors are arguing. But to say they were always anti-science is some crazy bullshit when it’s not just China that strict border controls and lockdowns worked in for well over a year. You’d also need to throw countries like Vietnam, New Zealand, and even Taiwan under that bus.

Lots of other folks make more reasonable and measured criticisms of China, some that are still OK to argue over and disagree with since even a reasonable take can be wrong, but guys like this are in prominent positions of our media apparatus. Which should probably also give people some pause in just what perspectives they get on China relying on even progressive news sources in the West.

[post-leffert]

China (Nov 27th 2022)

[theramenrater]

boeufy-time

[estaunsinterius]

Telegram-канал «Автономное действие» опубликовал следующую инфлрмацию:

Илья Фальковский опубликовал видео, как китайские полицейские задерживают анархистов после протестов в Гуанчжоу. Анархисты призывали выходить на акцию 3 декабря.

[faqiih24]

HISTORY OF CHINA | ARE YOU CHINA CITIZEN READ THIS ARTICLE

China has a long and rich history that dates back thousands of years. It is one of the oldest civilizations in the world, with a written history that stretches back over 4,000 years.

During the ancient period, China was ruled by a series of dynasties, each of which contributed to the development of the country's culture and society. The Xia Dynasty (2070-1600 BC) was the first recorded dynasty in Chinese history. It was followed by the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BC), which is known for its bronze casting and use of the Chinese script.

The Zhou Dynasty (1046-256 BC) saw the development of the Confucian system of ethics and the growth of the Chinese state. The Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC) united the various Chinese states under one ruler and began the construction of the Great Wall of China. The Han Dynasty (202 BC-220 AD) is considered a golden age in Chinese history, with significant advancements in art, literature, and science.

Throughout its history, China has been marked by periods of prosperity and cultural flourishing as well as periods of turmoil and conflict. In more recent times, China has undergone significant modernization and has become a major global economic power.

Click here to learn more about this article

[mohansus]

Evergrande in trouble, in blow to Xi

The "troubled" #chinese #realestate #developer, #evergrande missed yet another #deadline for submitting a #turnaround #plan.

While already classified as in #default, the latest "failure" is another nail in the long-winded #restructuring #process, which effectively moves #evergrande into #bankruptcy.

This couldn't have come at a worse time for #xi, and #china, already reeling under the spectacular #collapse of the #zerocovid #strategy, and by extension, a #body #blow to the #chineseeconomy.

As the ancient #chinese curse goes, "May You Live In Interesting Times!"

Interesting times indeed!

#financeandeconomy #finance #economy #business #globaleconomy

[milverton]

#Creative way of protest of students in #Tsinghua University. Who can work out what they want to say?

It's the Friedman equation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedmann_equations Friedman = Freed man

https://twitter.com/jenniferzeng97/status/1596992715107241984

[worldofwardcraft]

Bad year for autocrats.

December 22, 2022

Usually, this space serves up the misdeeds perpetrated by the Trump crime family, the corruption of various Republicans and other unpleasant happenings in the world. But, in the spirit of the season, we today take note of some of the year's positive events. In particular, the setbacks to strongman politics both here and abroad. Consider the following.

Russian war criminal Vlad Putin's invasion of Ukraine continues to go badly. This is especially true in the Donestsk and Luhansk regions, where the Russian army is losing 500 soldiers a day without achieving any perceptible results. According to a former Putin aide, the Russian president has even come up with an evacuation plan in case it all goes sideways that involves fleeing to Venezuela or Argentina.  And the cancellation of his annual year-end press conference for the first time in a decade is simply further evidence of Putin's deteriorating situation.

Meanwhile, other dictatorial regimes are not faring well, either. For nearly three months, thousands (mostly women) protesting the ayatollahs' regime have filled the streets in Iran. And the government's standard playbook for suppressing such uprisings — mass arrests, extrajudicial killings and state-sanctioned executions — has only intensified the movement's anger.

In China, protests broke out against the strict anti-COVID lockdowns the government had imposed due to a lack of effective vaccines. Amid increasingly violent clashes between police and demonstrators, the government was forced to lift restrictions in major cities, like Guangzhou, Shanghai and Chongqing. Vice-premier Sun Chunlan lamely explained that the government had decided to take a more "humane approach."

After his electoral defeat in October, outgoing Brazilian president and right-wing thug Jair Bolsonaro finally broke his almost six-week-long silence to tell his supporters he did not endorse a military intervention to return him to power and was preparing for his new role as opposition leader

Last week, the president of Peru, Pedro Castillo, was arrested after his impeachment and removal from office on charges of corruption and his unsuccessful (not to mention unconstitutional) attempt to then dissolve Congress and install himself as dictator. Castillo remains imprisoned while authorities build the case against him for "rebellion" and "conspiracy."

Finally, here at home, The J6 Committee has referred Donald Trump to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution. Confirming that the wannabe tyrant is definitely on the fast track to both prison and political oblivion.

While these events may not be reason enough for wild and giddy celebration, they're certainly indicators that authoritarians are not having an easy time of it lately. Which is good cause for this holiday to be a happy one.

[withchinesecharacteristics]

Our newest episodes

we talk about the protests in china and also national anthemsssss

[post-leffert]

Chengdu, China (Nov 27th 2022)

[kautilyanitii]

As infections grow, China claims it is now "difficult" to track COVID cases.

[newstownusa]

China is taking a firm step away from a strict "zero-Covid" approach after mass protests

China is taking a firm step away from a strict “zero-Covid” approach after mass protests

China on Wednesday announced it would be lifting some of its toughest rules to contain Covid-19, a major step away from a strategy that has restricted daily life for nearly three years and sparked rare nationwide protests in recent weeks. People with mild or asymptomatic coronavirus cases can self-isolate at home, health officials say, while strict testing requirements for some public places are…