Anger at Xi Jinping's zero-Covid policy is driving Chinese people onto the streets. China's apolitical society is rumbling. In which direction is the protest developing?
This morning, an eyewitness from the Chinese metropolis of Hangzhou reports a scene that he finds strange: a group of more than 100 people is walking in the rain on the street along the passenger transport center. You don't speak a word. They don't hold up signs. spooky. Several police officers and two traffic cops follow people all the way. Tenacious and persistent.
The Hangzhou-based social media user relates his observation to the zero-Covid-policy protests under Xi Jinping's government that flared up in at least 16 locations across the country from Shanghai to Beijing over the weekend. A reader tweeted the explanation for the silence of the silent demonstration: "We all know that we have left all the words of approval and rejection to a certain party. That's why we don't have to talk. We show our opinion with our bodies."
Apparently, the mood in China has turned. Approval for Xi Jinping's very own path through the corona pandemic is rapidly declining. While the authorities are registering records for new infections, new lockdowns and massive interventions in everyday life are already threatening, people in Ürümqi, Zhengzhou, Guangzhou, Beijing and Shanghai are taking to the streets for their freedom. The protests were triggered by a deadly house fire in Xinjiang's capital Ürümqi, in which ten people died on Thursday. Fearing that they would violate the curfew, residents had not fled the burning building at all or had fled too late. Lockdown lattice fences stopped the fire brigade.
There were also protests against corona restrictions in Germany, but the parallels end there. The lateral thinkers demos in Germany weren't quiet, they were loud. Even a torchlight casserole in front of the house of Saxony's health minister was offered.
With the relaxation of the Corona rules in March 2022, the protests in Germany decreased. China, on the other hand, which is pursuing a far more rigid course, has so far been able to rely on the stoic patience of its people. There was only isolated resistance. The most prominent recent example is the protest banner on the Sitong Bridge in Beijing shortly before the 20th party congress: We don't want any PCR tests, we don't want any lockdowns, it said.
Protests had already broken out in Shanghai on Saturday evening. Hundreds of people gather for a candlelight vigil on Ürümqi Street. Many of them hold up white sheets of paper - a symbolic protest against censorship. They keep chanting: "Xi Jinping, resign your office." As with the student protests of 1989, actions are organized by students. On Sunday, a protest formed in front of the elite Tsinghua University in Beijing. A student holds up a blank sheet of paper. The fellow students shout in an endless loop: "Democracy, legal system, freedom of expression."
In the province of Shanxi west of Beijing, a man was only prevented from speaking into a microphone in a public square by the police officers present. After the audience stands up for him, he demands his right to work in order to keep his home. You see masks everywhere. Even if the resistance arose as a reaction to the strict corona policy, the Chinese are very aware of the risk of infection. Or does the mask serve to avoid being recognized?
It is the escape from the hopeless spiral of a failed corona policy that is now driving many Chinese onto the streets, driving them. And it is the flight forward after fears of serious reprisals from participation in the first protests in the surveillance state of China. In the so-called social credit system, which rewards good behavior and punishes bad, taking part in illegal protests - and any protest is illegal - entails a severe deduction of points, leading to disadvantages in everyday life such as travel restrictions and worse.
The Corona app has also been expanded into a monitoring tool. The coming days will show how the government can deal with the unusual resistance. For the time being, people from Hangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing are reporting a sharp increase in police traffic. There were no protests on Monday - nor were there any reports of them in the Chinese media.
