Protests in China and the possible end of the Xi Jinping era

 

The pictures that have gone around the world are stunning. For the first time since the pro-democracy protests of 1989, resistance is forming in the People's Republic against the policies of the Communist Party and against the ruler Xi Jinping personally. People chant "China needs no emperor" or "Freedom or death!"

Party and state leader Xi, who secured his third term as head of state in October and thereby de facto opened the door to life-long rule, has experienced embarrassment. The regime's response did not take long. On Tuesday night, large police forces in Shanghai and Beijing prevented people from mass gathering again in the streets.

 

Extinguishing the protest fire

In the immediate vicinity of the places where the demonstrations took place, mobile phones were checked in search of photos or videos from the protests. The authorities, probably with the help of human facial recognition software, discovered who all participated in the protests. The police knocked on those people's doors. And she listened to them. In addition, journalists who reported on the protests were arrested. Universities in Beijing and the province of Guangdong sent their students home, on a kind of extraordinary vacation. This was to dissuade them from participating in new protest actions. It is to be expected that those students who remained on campus will have to reckon with fines.

 

The difference compared to the protests 33 years ago is that, so far, only a few thousand people have participated in the protest actions. The country's leadership obviously assumes that it will be able to put out the fire, which there was a danger that these protesters would spread. The protests are likely to strengthen the ranks of the Communist Party with its 94 million members. At the same time, the protests also show that they no longer "burn" the numerous lies that the Chinese leadership serves to the people every day.

 

One of Xi Jinping's standard platitudes has meanwhile become a routine accusation of foreign countries - one of the things that the protesters also mock. The "Guardian" newspaper quotes one person who participated in the protests in Beijing: "We must not travel abroad, we must not consume foreign media. Then how can foreign countries incite us to do anything?" Some others add in a more serious tone: "The fire in Ürümqi, was it foreign forces?", "The bus accident in Guizhou, is foreign countries responsible for that?" Ten people died in a fire in Ürümqi, 27 people died in Guizhou - in an accident of a bus transporting them to quarantine.The protesters complain that these

 

Xi's mistakes in steps

 

Both students and workers took part in the demonstrations. On the campus they shouted slogans like "Down with the KP!", on the streets you could hear "Enough PCR-tests! Freedom!" Their messages are proof that Xi made a mistake in the steps with his "Zero-COVID" strategy. His ideology is to blame for this: China does not need the rest of the world at all, claim the ultra-nationalists. And they add that the world cannot do without China. Xi's is a mission to return the People's Republic back to where China belongs anyway - in the very center of world events, according to ultra-nationalist ideologues.

 

And whoever thinks and talks like that cannot buy someone else's vaccine and with its help carry out an effective vaccination campaign and thus create the conditions for the lifting of quarantine and other COVID restrictions. And that's why people remain isolated in their apartments for up to 100 days after the announcement of the lockdown, because that's what Xi wants. And the dimensions of those lockdowns are still huge: on November 23, 415 million people were in lockdown, a week earlier 340 million - and that in a situation where only 28,000 new infections were registered per day.

 

These were not the first protests in 2022.

The images that can be seen on smartphones and screens all over the world these days do not show the first protests against Xi's government this year. Since May 18 this year, non-governmental organizations have registered up to 735 demonstrations, of which only about 50 were directed against the corona measures. About 230 protests were held in the early summer, after the bubble in the real estate market "deflated", and when thousands and thousands of people faced the fear that their savings, i.e. the money they had invested in apartments, were lost. banking crisis, when depositors could no longer withdraw their money. In addition, due to the coronavirus pandemic, the economy is on its knees, which is why the unemployment rate among young people has risen to around 20 percent, which has not been at such a high level for a long time. "Economist" magazine analyzed various data about the situation in China and presented them to its readers.

 

On Tuesday, the protesters withdrew, it was a victory on points for the Communist Party. But hope still exists. During the Communist Party congress in October, a protester unfurled a placard on a bridge in Beijing, calling for the "dictator and traitor Xi" to be ousted from his position. People applauded the placard's message, car horns blared. the only brave person, the protest grew to several thousand brave people in six weeks. Next week it could be hundreds of thousands, in a month it could be millions. Unless something important changes about the Chinese nomenclature's

 

Alexander Görlach is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Council on Ethics in International Relations and a research fellow at the University of Oxford's Internet Institute. After spending time in Taiwan and Hong Kong, his main topic is the rise of China and what it means for the free world. He held various positions at Harvard University and Cambridge University.