The Manila Times

Angry protests call for China’s Xi to step down

YEN MAKABENTA

First word

CHINA is so big and its people so many that ordinary observers need to use a different scale in measuring what is happening in China today. Filipinos should especially guard against using the same scale that they used in turning the protests at EDSA in February 1986 into an iconic show of people power.

For the moment, the angry protests in China are not aiming yet at regime change. They seek rather to overthrow the unpopular zero-Covid policy of President Xi Jinping.

The protests are not happening in one city, let alone a single avenue. The protests are taking place in at least eight big cities in China.

The scale and speed of events are so fluid that no single media organization can be relied on to provide quickly a complete picture of what happened in China on Sunday and what is happening now, or what may be simmering under the surface in the country now.

Sudden, rare show of dissent

All the wire services and the major newspapers around the world had a common headline story to report on: the sudden wave of dissent in China. The country has boiled over in protest against the draconian Covid policies of President Xi and his communist government. Some media organizations took to calling it a “Covid uprising as though the virus itself had risen against China.

Others laid the stress on the popular demand for President Xi Jinping to step down, and for the Communist Party to similarly quit.

What all media reported in common was the fact that the protests have been principally ignited by the Chinese government’s zero-Covid policy and its draconian measures to eradicate Covid-19. Xi told all of China in effect that there could be no easing of the anti-Covid measures until all of China and the Chinese people are freed from the virus. The stark unreality of this, while all other countries have learned to live with Covid, lies at the heart of this explosion of discontent and anger in China today.

The Associated Press filed the following updated report from Shanghai on Monday, a day after the explosion of protests in at least eight cities.

“Protesters angered by strict anti-virus measures called for China’s powerful leader to resign, an unprecedented rebuke as authorities in at least eight cities struggled to suppress demonstrations Sunday that represent a rare direct challenge to the ruling Communist Party.

“Police using pepper spray drove away demonstrators in Shanghai who called for Xi Jinping to step down and an end to one-party rule, but hours later people rallied again in the same spot. Police again broke up the demonstration, and a reporter saw protesters under arrest being driven away in a bus.

“The protests — which began Friday and have spread to cities including the capital, Beijing, and dozens of university campuses — are the most widespread show of opposition to the ruling party in decades.

“In a video of the protest in Shanghai verified by the Associated Press, chants against Xi, the most powerful leader since at least the 1980s, and the Chinese Communist Party sounded loud and clear: ‘Xi Jinping! Step down! CCP! Step down!’

“Three years after the virus emerged, China is the only major country still trying to stop transmission of Covid-19. Its ‘zero-Covid’ strategy has suspended access to neighborhoods for weeks at a time. Some cities carry out daily virus tests on millions of residents.

“This has kept China’s infection numbers lower than those of the United States and other major countries, but public acceptance has worn thin. People who are quarantined at home in some areas say they lack food and medicine. The ruling party faced public anger following the deaths of two children whose parents said antivirus controls hampered efforts to get medical help.

“The current protests erupted after a fire broke out Thursday and killed at least 10 people in an apartment building in the city of Urumqi in the northwest, where some have been locked in their homes for four months. That prompted an outpouring of angry questions online about whether firefighters or people trying to escape were blocked by locked doors or other restrictions.

“About 300 demonstrators gathered late Saturday in Shanghai, most of whose 25 million people were confined to their homes for almost two months starting in late March.

“Some called for an official apology for the deaths in the fire in Urumqi in the Xinjiang region. One member of Xinjiang’s Uyghur ethnic group, which has been the target of a security crackdown that includes mass detentions, shared his experiences of discrimination and police violence.

“’Everyone thinks that Chinese people are afraid to come out and protest, that they don’t have any courage,’ said the protester, adding it was his first time demonstrating. ‘Actually in my heart, I also thought this way. But then when I went there, I found that the environment was such that everyone was very brave.’

“The scene turned violent early Sunday. Hundreds of police broke up the more active group before they came for the second as they tried to move people off the main street. The protester said that he saw people being taken away, forced by police into vans, but could not identify them.”

Blank sheets of paper

Reuters also reported how the protesters are using blank sheets of paper to express their anger over Covid-19 restrictions in a rare, widespread outpouring of public dissent that has gone beyond social media to some of China’s streets and top universities.

“Images and videos circulated online showed students at universities in cities including Nanjing and Beijing holding up blank sheets of paper in silent protest, a tactic used in part to evade censorship or arrest…

“Widespread in-person protests are rare in China, where room for dissent has been all-but eliminated under President Xi Jinping, forcing citizens mostly to vent on social media where they play cat-andmouse games with censors.

“Similar sheets of paper could be seen held by people gathering on the grounds of Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University to sing the Chinese national anthem on Sunday.

“Protesters were advised to bring a sheet of white paper to at least one planned demonstration, according to tips being shared in chat groups seen by Reuters.

“In Hong Kong in 2020, activists also raised blank sheets of white paper in protest to avoid slogans banned under the city’s new national security law, which was imposed after massive and sometimes violent protests the previous year. Demonstrators in Moscow have also used them this year to protest Russia’s war with Ukraine.

“One Beijing resident surnamed Wang, who joined his neighbors on Saturday in pressuring local authorities to release his apartment from lockdown, described his sadness at hearing about ‘secondary disasters’ involving the Covid policy.

“’If you fear a blank sheet of paper, you are weak inside,’” one Weibo user posted.

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2022-11-29T08:00:00.0000000Z

2022-11-29T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://digitaledition.manilatimes.net/article/281758453304093

The Manila Times