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Protestors in Beijing (Photo: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)
Protestors in Beijing (Photo: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

PoliticsNovember 29, 2022

The protests in China, explained

Protestors in Beijing (Photo: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)
Protestors in Beijing (Photo: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

‘White paper’ protests have sprung up across China after at least 10 Uyghurs died while locked in an apartment fire in Urumqi, Xinjiang. Tze Ming Mok explains.

Wtf, did these protests come out of nowhere?

Nope. After China’s government successfully eliminated Covid via mass lockdowns in the first 2020 wave, President-for-life Xi Jinping doubled down on Covid Zero for subsequent waves and has used it as a cover for expanding the oppressive power of the state to cement his own personal authority. This has meant two years of incredibly draconian population controls, particularly in Xinjiang, and constant mass PCR testing (not even RATs!), at the expense of investing in a decent vaccination and hospital capacity strategy. 

The Chinese government right now is kind of where New Zealand was during our 2021 delta lockdown – struggling with a pivotal choice, with a restive population and more infectious variants scaling its defences. But China has no exit plan via effective mass vaccination (not that New Zealand has very effective mass vaccination, but that’s another story). China still has failed to develop an MRNA vaccine of its own, and has approved none for domestic use – which is, as this domestic pharma-guy says, mind-boggling. Its Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines are simply not that good, even though propaganda encouraged Chinese citizens and the diaspora to believe they were the most racially effective for Chinese people, as if that’s a thing. Xi Jinping’s bet did not pan out. Nationalism is a helluva drug, but along with PRC vaccines, it only seems about 60% effective right now. 

Didn’t China just relax its Covid controls though? 

The recent post-Party Conference shift to “dynamic” Covid Zero is meant to have been a relaxing of the grip, but as more infectious variants take hold, the “dynamic” pockets of control are actually now covering more of the population than ever before. On the first day of dynamic Covid Zero, Chongqing (pop. 20 million), went into lockdown. And it’s not that dynamic to be locked into a burning building.

What happened with the burning building?

Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, had been in lockdown for months, with Uyghur neighbourhoods particularly targeted for heavy-handed restrictions. An electrical fire started in a Uyghur apartment building that was locked up, preventing residents from escaping, and firefighters were late to the blaze while locals filmed the whole thing. Officials tried to cover it up and gaslight the dead, but even they admitted that at least 10 died in the fire – the true toll is expected to be much higher.

Tributes in Beijing for the victims of the Urumqi apartment fire (Photo: Micael Zhang/AFP via Getty Images

So Chinese people care about Uyghurs now? Why aren’t they chanting about concentration camps? 

The last two years of being literally locked up, and herded like cattle in PCR queues, have been Han China’s “…and then they came for me” moment. I doubt that the majority of Han Chinese supporting these protests are motivated by the Uyghur genocide – and giving voice to any such motivations would cross the reddest of red lines. But as we know from “the Clubhouse Spring”, Han Chinese are not total idiots. Those in Xinjiang especially, know exactly what has gone down

The first protest after the fire was a street protest of furious Urumqi locals, mainly led by Han Chinese given that Uyghurs are simply unable to take these kinds of risks now. Xinjiang specialists note how accommodating the authorities were to the Han protesters, with the Urumqi lockdown almost immediately being lifted after the local protest given the importance of keeping Han communities onside as vanguard settlers for the colonial regime there

For some in the wider protests, the Urumqi fire will be a symbolic stand-in for a crime that they are unable to name, the protests an outlet for a debt they cannot otherwise pay. Most, however, are likely motivated by fear of a good example. Video of the fire is beyond horrific and has been distributed widely – you listen to people burning to death, screaming, pleading, KAI MEN, KAI MEN, Open the door! Open the door! The rest of China heard their own voices all too easily, recognised their own nightmare.

Are these really spontaneous, leaderless protests? 

There is one leader left standing in China: Xi Jinping. And there is one thing that unites all the different dissatisfied elements of Chinese society – migrant workers, students, urbanites, ethnic minorities – and that is the Covid Zero policy. Under Xi Jinping, China’s civil society networks were decimated by hardline government restriction starting in 2015. What does leadership mean in a place where society’s leadership structures have been destroyed, but everyone’s going through the same thing? It means anyone can strike a blow, knowing that enough people are connected to the same experience that it has the potential to reach the whole nation.

It happened during the October Party Congress that appointed Xi as President-for-life. Peng Lifa, or the “Sitong Bridge Hero”, acting alone, strung two banners on a Beijing overpass in front of the world’s media, burned tires, and chanted slogans through a loudspeaker, before being taken by security forces. His daring stunned the nation, and the phrases on his banners went immediately into circulation in China and its diaspora, in a game of censorship, ironic omission and hiding in toilets.

These phrases have been the template of the protest chants and demands of the past few days across the country, attacking not only the Covid Zero lockdowns, but also dictatorship, demanding democracy, the vote, freedom, and the end of Xi Jinping’s cultural revolution-style cult of personality. The distinct syntax of these quite varied demands, and the framework of Covid Zero, are the unifying voice of the street demonstrations, which otherwise have no organising structure.

Like Hong Kong in 2019, these protests are as yet leaderless, and that is their power – being unpredictable and impossible to encircle or negotiate with, like water. Tankies are already blaming the CIA; which is not only a grim view of human abilities to have actual feelings and thoughts independently of any government, but also betrays a total lack of knowledge about China. Anti-lockdown protests and riots have not just been happening over the past few days, and they aren’t like New Zealand anti-lockdown protests against conditions like “you have to wear a mask to the supermarket and get vaccinated”.

Outbursts are happening in the face of objectively cruel and heavy-handed conditions. Labour tensions have been building for months, if not years, over factory lock-ins and lockdowns in exploitative “closed loop” Zero Covid production systems, resulting in recent mass breakouts and riots by workers literally fearing imprisonment in factories, or simply unable to survive lockdown without functional state support.

Few major cities have escaped untraumatised by the Zero Covid policy.  Chengdu residents were locked in their apartment buildings even after a major earthquake; on Sunday night, Chengdu chanted not just against lockdowns but against Xi Jinping’s life-term and his Cultural Revolution 2.0. Shanghai did two months this year of being locked and barricaded inside their apartment buildings, living in dread of being sent to grim mass quarantine centres. With patchy or nonexistent government support for providing food and basic supplies, Shanghairen essentially developed a mutual aid system – communism without communists, as 1920s Ukrainian anarchists would say.

Long stereotyped as a self-interested materialistic hellhole, Shanghai has shown its mettle as a community of citizens working collectively and furiously. This is the vibe behind Shanghai’s most radical chants on the Urumqi Road on Saturday night: Xi Jinping xiatai! Gongchangdang xiatai! Resign Xi Jinping! Resign CCP! 

Is this the end of the CCP?

Weeeeell, I doubt it. The Party Congress appointments in October shuffled away any remaining anti-Xi faction from the levers of power and, if you know your revolutions, an opposition faction is generally necessary for a revolution. And who would want to launch a palace coup to seize this poisoned chalice anyway? 

The movement may be stamped out, or it may fizzle as the regime tries to finesse its way through with localised accommodations as it seems to have in Urumqi, or by splitting the barely coherent movement on class lines. We hear calls for democracy, but this is not a democracy movement – yet. 

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Still, the fact that it is happening at all is a huge blow to Xi Jinping’s freshly-painted state of absolute authority. He will come out of this weakened – forever the guy who provoked the most wide-ranging cross-class political unrest seen in China since the Tiananmen movement due to his own mania for total control. Meanwhile, the chatter right now is all about protest tactics and when, not if, to next come out onto the street. The game has changed.

中国人加油!

Keep going!
Crowds protest outside Jacinda Ardern’s office (Photo: Stewart Sowman-Lund, additional design Bianca Cross)
Crowds protest outside Jacinda Ardern’s office (Photo: Stewart Sowman-Lund, additional design Bianca Cross)

PoliticsNovember 28, 2022

PM denies it took Janak Patel’s death to trigger new crime prevention scheme

Crowds protest outside Jacinda Ardern’s office (Photo: Stewart Sowman-Lund, additional design Bianca Cross)
Crowds protest outside Jacinda Ardern’s office (Photo: Stewart Sowman-Lund, additional design Bianca Cross)

The same day hundreds protested outside the prime minister’s Auckland office against a lack of protection for retail workers, Jacinda Ardern revealed plans to deal with New Zealand’s rising retail crime problem. Stewart Sowman-Lund reports.

Millions of dollars will be pumped into crime prevention by the government, though prime minister Jacinda Ardern denies that it took the death of a retail worker to make it happen. 

The government this afternoon announced a new package targeted at stopping retail crime. It includes a new fog cannon subsidy scheme that will provide $4,000 to any small shop or dairy that wants to install a device. A new $4 million fund will support local councils in Auckland, Hamilton and Bay of Plenty. And the existing $6 million retail crime prevention fund has had its eligibility extended to include aggravated robberies, including those committed over the past 12 months.

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“The initiatives we’re announcing today make this the most significant crime prevention financial package in recent memory,” Ardern told media at her post-cabinet press conference. “It backs up Police actions, through funding to support crime prevention initiatives, such as better street lighting and cameras and by investing in more fog cannons.”

The announcement comes just hours after dozens of protests were held around the country in the wake of the death of Auckland dairy worker Janak Patel.

The 34-year-old was stabbed to death outside the Rose Cottage Superette in Sandringham last week following an aggravated robbery. Three people have since been arrested in relation to his death. 

a crowd of protesters outside a labour office
People calling for change gather outside the prime minister’s electorate office on New North Road. (Photo: Stewart Sowman-Lund)

But while the protests were held in response to Patel’s death, Ardern rejected any assertion her new crime prevention package was a reactionary measure. “I disagree,” Ardern said when The Spinoff suggested it took a death for the new funding to be signed off. “The council funding that we have announced was put before cabinet prior… the youth initiatives were announced and put in place prior to today. We have continued to look at this issue as we have seen what is happening in our communities.”

Outside Jacinda Ardern’s Auckland electorate office today, hundreds gathered to call for tougher penalties for criminals, more protections for workers – and to share the message that “enough is enough”. The protest was largely peaceful, though at one point The Spinoff observed a disruption after a protester encouraged people to move off the busy New North Road and onto the crammed footpath. “The goal was to deliver a peaceful message. That message has been delivered, clear the road,” he yelled, before a swift response of “no!” as chanting recommenced.

Dairy owners Singita and Raju have been in the country for more than 25 years but told The Spinoff they no longer felt comfortable running their business. They’ve had many incidents at their Richardson Road store, particularly with people targeting cigarettes. “It’s not safe,” Singita said. “We’ve had enough,” her husband Raju added. “Every morning you open the door and you get scared… [there is] fear in your mind that something will happen and someone will do a silly thing. Always constant fear.”

Dairy owners Singita and Raju (Photo: Stewart Sowman-Lund)

That was a common theme from those in attendance at the protest. Karen, another local retail worker, said she too had experienced intimidation while at work. It prompted her to join the crowd in Morningside today. “I felt that I needed to stand with other small business owners in New Zealand to stand up against this crime that we’re experiencing,” she told The Spinoff. 

Ardern said her goal with the new announcements was to remove the fear of workers simply going to their jobs. However, she rejected any suggestion the government had been slow to act. As for whether the issue had become “political”, as protester Karen believed it had, Ardern acknowledged there was a “huge amount of emotion” surrounding the issue.

Both Karen and Raju believed Ardern should have faced the crowd. “She should be [here]. She should come and talk to people and comfort those who suffer,” Raju said. “The government has run out of ideas of how to stop crime, it’s going out of control now. They have to do something completely different to turn [it] around.”

Ardern was meeting with cabinet at the time of the protest, signing off on today’s announcement. Act Party leader David Seymour and his deputy Brooke van Velden did attend the protest – seemingly the sole representatives from parliament. Seymour told The Spinoff he was fine with Ardern choosing to chair cabinet over attending the protest, but only “if she’s making good changes to the government’s approach to retail crime”.

David Seymour protests outside the PM’s office (Photo: Stewart Sowman-Lund)

“I’m here today because this is a group of people who feel they’ve been neglected. They feel that despite doing very dangerous work, long hours, alone, often living above the convenience store, the government promised protection… and didn’t deliver. We’ve been hounding the government about that in parliament, now it seems we’ve got their attention because of a tragedy,” Seymour said.

“It shouldn’t require a tragedy to change the government’s approach to retail crime.”

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