Image credit: Badiucao
Protests in China which originated as demonstrations against strict Zero Covid measures have escalated into pro-democracy riots. While there have been scattered protests prior to recent weeks, those have been short-lived with typically harsh police action.
This latest wave is different.
According to economics commentator Business Basics (@businessbasiics), as of 2 days ago there were protests in over 13 cities and about 80 campuses. Ethnicities in China appear to have united in the protests, with ethnic minorities such as Uyghurs and Manju protesting alongside Han.
Image credit: @businessbasiics
The final straw appears to have been a devastating apartment building fire on 24th November in Urumqi City. Apartment residents were unable to evacuate the building due to doors being locked from the outside. Witnesses have shared video footage of an attending fire truck being unable to get close enough to the building to extinguish the fire. There is also horrifying footage of residents falling from apartment windows in their attempts to escape the flames.
On Nov 23, when a fire broke out in #Urumqi , people’s doors were locked from outside. Fire truck couldn’t get closer either( see my previous tweet). The latest figure says 44 were burnt to death, including a 3 y/o kid. That’s one of the reasons for today’s protests. pic.twitter.com/s4E0JHk4wQ
— Jennifer Zeng 曾錚 (@jenniferzeng97) November 25, 2022
China’s Zero Covid plan has seen intensive testing of its population and surveillance using an app on mobiles. A green covid QR code is required for all normal activities. Harsh lockdowns of entire apartment buildings and areas follow a single positive case, where compounds are barricaded and doors are locked externally. People have been trapped in their apartments for weeks, many unable to leave for any reason including the purchase of food supplies and reliant on deliveries.
Families are forcibly separated if there are positive cases. Even infants and toddlers are not exempt and required to be quarantined in dedicated facilities, sometimes without their parents.
In the case of the Urumqi apartment fire, residents had been locked in the building for over 100 days.
A4 Revolution
A video shared by Chinese diaspora artist Badiucao, who also drew the feature image for this article, shows pre-fire protestors chanting “Stop lockdown” and “We are human beings”.
It was also common for the national anthem to be sung and the national flag to be waved during such protests, to indicate the protest was against a policy and not the nation.
Following the apartment fire, anti-covid measure protests changed.
The first notable changed protest occurred in Shanghai 2 days later, where thousands gathered at Urumqi Road (to memorialise the victims of the Urumqi fire). Protestors chanted “Communist Party Step Down! Xijinping Step Down!” in unison. Numerous arrests followed.
The protests then spread to the large cities of Beijing, Wuhan, Guilin, Chengdu and Guangzhou.
Protestors are being arrested for holding protest signs so they began holding blank pieces of paper. This became known as the “White Paper Revolution”. A meaning behind the blank pieces of paper was derived, hence the “A4 Revolution”.
