While the rest of the world adjusts to life post-pandemic and post-lockdown, China, the nation in which Covid-19 originated, is still experiencing back-to-back lockdowns and sporadic outbreaks of the disease.
During the first outbreaks in 2020, China employed a “zero-Covid” policy, in which as soon as a single Covid case was reported, mandatory lockdowns were put in place until not a single new case was reported.
This strategy was initially quite effective. China’s rates of infection were quite low when compared to other nations (at least according to official CCP figures) and public support in China for this approach was high. As most of the rest of the world experienced high levels of infection and death, China boasted of it’s better-than-average response to the pandemic, made possible by it’s overbearing and oppressive system of government.
Now however, 3 years on from the first outbreaks of Covid, much of China’s population is still subjected to lengthy lockdowns and severe restrictions on their already restricted human rights. The CCP still employs the “zero-Covid” policy, and entire cities are still being placed into quarantine if a single case of the disease is reported.
Last week, 10 people died in a fire in Urumqi, the capital of the western province of Xinjiang whilst locked down in a tower block. It has been independently reported that strict lockdown rules are partly to blame for slow emergency response and evacuation efforts. The CCP denies these allegations.
These deaths have triggered protests against the “zero-Covid” policy in Urumqi, that quickly spread to other major cities including Shanghai, Wuhan, Chengdu, and the Chinese capital Beijing.
Whist the initial protests were simply voicing opposition to the “zero-Covid” policy, as they have become larger and more widespread, demonstrations now carry a broader anti-government message, and are being described by commentators as the biggest threat to CCP rule in China since the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, which were brutally suppressed by PLA troops.
Demonstrations still largely focus on ending the CCP’s lockdown policy, but also address inhumane working conditions, human rights abuses including against ethnic Uyghurs in Xinjiang, discontent with CCP rule, and the desire for Xi Jinping to step down as leader.
These protests are peaceful, apart from a few unrelated outlying incidents. Despite the use of non-violence by the Chinese people, the CCP has responded in its usual fashion; cracking down on peaceful protestors with beatings, pepper spray, arbitrary detention, and aggressive coercion. A BBC journalist has been amongst those beaten whilst in custody.
In an attempt to bypass CCP censorship, demonstrators have taken to holding up blank sheets of paper in lieu of banners, a gesture similar to one made by pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong a few years ago. This is done to symbolise the prohibition on free speech in China; they will be hunted down and persecuted for holding signs that say anything remotely anti-government, so they hold signs that say nothing instead.
This has led to the movement being called the “White Paper Uprising” or “White Paper Revolution”. Whilst widespread public support for overall regime change in China is still yet to materialise, this movement has shown that there is very real discontent with the CCP among the people of China, and they are not afraid to take to the streets to voice that discontent.
The CCP is quite rightly afraid of it’s people’s free will, as all dictatorships are. The large-scale uprisings in Iran have demonstrated to the CCP that authoritarian regimes are not beyond being overthrown by the oppressed, which now seems likely to happen in Iran.
However, the CCP has shown the callous disregard it has for the lives of its own citizens after the 1989 massacres, and the ongoing genocide of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and its people know that if they rise up en mass in any way that threatens communist rule, they will be slaughtered.
This is surely a wake-up call for the CCP nonetheless. Whilst it will take a lot more than unrest over Covid lockdowns to overthrow their government, if they do not act to appease their people swiftly, it may well spiral into a much larger threat.
stay safe
/e