dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA

After 3 Years And Deaths By Despots, Chinese Protesters Have Zero Tolerance For Xi’s ‘Zero Covid’
BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD
NOVEMBER 29, 2022
6 MIN READ
Chinese protesters demonstrating over CCP lockdowns

‘These people have been languishing under Covid Zero policies … for almost three years now and they’re tired of it.’


From Beijing to Shanghai, demonstrations erupted in major cities across China over the weekend, with protesters voicing their dissatisfaction with the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) draconian “zero Covid” policies. The protests mark a rare occurrence in a nation where basic civil rights are routinely suppressed by China’s authoritarian government.

The protests erupted after the deaths of 10 people in an apartment building fire in the city of Urumqi, the capital of the western region of China known as Xinjiang. According to The New York Times, it took authorities three hours to fully extinguish the flames, leading many on Chinese social media to criticize the CCP’s “zero Covid” approach and citizens throughout Xinjiang to take to the streets.

The backlash to the government’s handling of the incident spread throughout the country, leading to protests in some of China’s biggest population hubs. In the capital of Beijing, residents generated multiple, small-scale protests throughout the city on Saturday, with participants reportedly shouting phrases such as “End the lockdown.” Larger demonstrations against the CCP’s “zero Covid” strategy were also seen in Shanghai, where citizens with candles and flowers called for Chinese dictator Xi Jinping and the ruling CCP to “step down” from leadership and for a reversal of the city’s heavy-handed Covid restrictions.

Other Chinese cities that have reportedly experienced protests include Nanjing, Guangzhou, Xian, and Wuhan.

“These people have been languishing under Covid Zero policies … for almost three years now and they’re tired of it,” Steven Mosher, the president of the Population Research Institute and a notable authority on Chinese affairs, told The Federalist. “They’re also suffering because the promise of the Chinese Communist Party, that China was going to be in the first rank of nations and that people in China were going to enjoy a standard of living equivalent to what we enjoy in the United States and the West, has turned out to be false.”

The nationwide protests have since been collectively called the “White Paper Revolution,” in reference to the blank sheets of white paper being used as a symbol of defiance by many of the gatherings’ participants.

Many Chinese youths are notably participating in the demonstrations. On Sunday, for instance, hundreds of students rallied at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, singing the Chinese national anthem and chanting phrases such as, “Freedom will prevail,” and, “No to lockdowns, we want freedom.” Student protests have also been reported at numerous other universities throughout China.

According to Mosher, this stems from a growing view among Chinese youths that life under an increasingly dictatorial Xi, combined with accretive economic challenges (such as high unemployment), does not bode well for their future prospects.

“The chants range all the way from ‘End Covid’ to ‘Get rid of the traitor Xi Jinping,’ so you’ve got a pretty broad swath there [ranging] from a very narrow complaint about a specific government policy to a complaint about the Chinese Communist Party and its leader,” Mosher said.

How Are Xi and the CCP Responding?
As expected, Xi and government authorities have resorted to brutal force to break up the largely peaceful demonstrations. On Sunday, police violently removed protesters in Shanghai, with CBS News reporting incidents of demonstrators being dragged into vans and pepper sprayed. Police in major cities such as Beijing have also been tasked with stopping and searching the phones of citizens found at protest sites to check if they have been using illegal social media apps and virtual private networks.

According to Mosher, given the authoritarian nature of Xi and the CCP, it remains plausible that the former will “use as much force as he needs to put down the demonstrations,” adding that he wouldn’t be surprised if the ongoing protests “end in bloodshed.”

“China actually spends more money on internal security than it does on its external military buildup, which is quite an astonishing fact, but tells you the kind of police state we’re talking about,” Mosher said. “I don’t think anybody in the [People’s Liberation Army] or the People’s Armed Police will oppose [Xi] because he’s basically fired or charged with corruption any high-level officials who have opposed his rule over the last 10 years. So, he’s pretty much in charge in China.”

The increased crackdown by government authorities has not been exclusive to Chinese citizens, however. While reporting on the protests in Shanghai, BBC News journalist Ed Lawrence was beaten and detained by Chinese police before being released a few hours later. The Chinese government has since offered a myriad of excuses for the incident, ranging from claims that Lawrence was arrested “for his own good in case he caught COVID from the crowd” to assertions that he “did not identify himself as a journalist and didn’t voluntarily present his press credentials.”

Joe Biden’s Muted Response
As of this article’s publication, the response to the ongoing protests from President Joe Biden and his administration has been largely mute. While Biden himself has yet to issue a public statement about the matter, the reaction from administration officials such as National Security Council spokesman John Kirby has been just as dismissive.

When asked during a White House press briefing on Monday about Biden’s reaction to hearing Chinese protesters shout “freedom” or “Xi Jinping step down,” Kirby deflected by saying, “The president’s not going to speak for protesters,” and that the “protesters are speaking for themselves.”

Kirby’s refusal to publicly back the protesters’ fight for freedom mirrors a statement from a National Security Council official provided to Politico, which claimed that the Biden administration is not pursuing a “zero COVID” strategy in the U.S. and that they are focused on enhancing “vaccination rates, including boosters and making testing and treatment easily accessible.”

“We should be saying to China’s leaders, that if you open fire on peaceful crowds of demonstrators, you will lose your assets in the United States,” said Mosher. “We will confiscate your assets [just] as we confiscated the yachts of the Russian oligarchs. We will send Chinese students [studying in the U.S.] home in large numbers. … We will decouple from China’s economy at an even faster rate.”

“There are things we should be saying right now, and all the White House is saying is ‘Increase your vaccination rate and don’t forget your second or third booster.’ It’s just ridiculous,” he added.

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

Lockdowns are over bro...
So are the protests...
Weird, no???
And no "summer of love"...
Cheers🥃🥃
Celebrating the first day of Christmas...

BIRDMAN

dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA

Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. Nothing to see here. Move along.

China’s ‘Paper Revolution’ Could Be The Beginning Of The End For Xi
BY: HELEN RALEIGH
DECEMBER 01, 2022
7 MIN READ

Protests have quickly spread nationwide as the Chinese people express their dissatisfaction with China’s leader Xi Jinping.

When the Chinese people saw images of maskless fans enjoying the World Cup, they asked why the rest of the world had moved on while they were still cooped up in their tiny apartments like animals, bored and hungry (Chinese censors reportedly stopped showing images of fans during World Cup broadcasts).

This is while something extraordinary is happening in China: Residents in multiple cities, at significant personal risk, took to the streets over the weekend to demand an end to the government’s draconian “zero Covid” policy. These protests have quickly spread nationwide and become venues for the Chinese people to express their dissatisfaction with China’s leader Xi Jinping. Many protesters held blank sheets of paper as a symbol of lacking free speech under Beijing’s censorship (hence, the nickname “Paper Revolution”). Some even openly called for Xi to resign.

Xi’s most prominent concern has always been that a color revolution (a term that describes anti-government movements) might take place in China and topple his and the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) rule. Since coming to power in late 2012, Xi has built a high-tech surveillance state to monitor 1.4 billion Chinese people’s thoughts and behaviors while ruthlessly suppressing dissenters.

Xi’s intimidation seemed to have worked. While some small and isolated protests, mostly over environmental issues or economic grievances, took place in China during the first 10 years of his rule, China hadn’t experienced any large-scale protests nationwide that directly challenged the CCP and Xi personally until now. Xi has no one but himself to blame for sparking China’s “Paper Revolution” and jeopardizing his third term and beyond.

Series of Tragedies Under Lockdown
A deadly fire in a high-rise apartment in Xinjiang initially triggered the weekend protests. In the same region, the CCP has been accused of subjecting millions of Uyghur Muslims to genocide. Videos spread of victims desperately crying for help from the apartment building, but people could not escape nor rescuers enter because the entrance was sealed, a common lockdown measure imposed by local authorities. It took fire trucks more than two hours to reach the burning building, again, due to the barriers set up by local authorities to keep people confined inside their apartments. Since the early days of the Covid outbreak in 2020, Chinese authorities have routinely sealed the front entrances of entire apartment buildings or barricaded residential communities to enforce lockdowns.

The deadly fire in Xinjiang is sadly one of a long string of tragedies caused by the government’s inhumane Covid restrictions. Several other incidents have drawn national outcries this year alone. In January, a woman who was eight months pregnant in Xi’an lost her baby after local hospitals refused to treat her because her Covid test had expired by a few hours. During Shanghai lockdowns between March and April, children as young as newborns were taken away from their parents and committed to poorly run government daycare facilities. Residents also experienced severe food shortages unheard of since the Great Chinese famine (1959-1961).

Last month, a woman in Beijing, the capital of China, who was welded into her apartment for days, jumped to her death from her apartment building. The audio of her daughter from days before, “banging on the gate and begging community workers to unseal her mother’s door and help her,” went viral on China’s social media before censors took it down, the Daily Mail reported.

These heartbreaking incidents represent the human toll caused by the Chinese government’s cruel “zero Covid” policy. The Chinese people have experienced many pent-up fears, frustrations, and furies for the last three years. They are afraid that such tragedies will happen to them or their families, and they desperately want to avoid becoming the next victims. They are frustrated that their suffering has not “defeated” Covid as Beijing promised. On the contrary, China has recently reported a record number of Covid infections. The Chinese people are also furious Xi made it clear during his most recent speech at the 20th Party Congress that his “zero Covid” approach is here to stay.

Many Have Had Enough
Many Chinese have had enough, and the deadly fire incident in Xinjiang became the last straw. They decided to take a stand, regardless of possible consequences (in China, those who participate in protests usually are imprisoned) because, after three years of hardship, many felt they had nothing more to lose.

Judging by the slogans protesters chanted, last weekend’s protests were against more than the government’s Covid restrictions. People are dissatisfied with Xi’s economic policies too. Xi’s ideological war on China’s private businesses and Chinese entrepreneurs, his tit-for-tat trade war with then-President Donald Trump, and the three-year lockdowns have caused China’s economic growth to significantly slow down, depressed some sectors such as the property market, and pushed up unemployment rates, especially among the young. The lockdowns also drained many people’s savings since they couldn’t go to work.

Huge Sex Trafficking Problem
Besides economic issues, the Chinese people are concerned about their safety and the government’s corruption. In February this year, right around the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, news of a woman in Xuzhou, China, being found locked up in a doorless animal hut in freezing temperatures, sparked a national uproar. Local police and government officials claimed she had mental health issues, and they didn’t know about her situation until the news broke out. But it turned out the woman was a victim of sex trafficking and had endured her husband’s abuses for years. Under public pressure, local authorities arrested a few human traffickers but held no one else accountable. Censors scrubbed the internet to prevent any discussion related to this case and sex trafficking in general.

The government had underestimated the public furor. Sex trafficking is a massive problem in China, where men outnumber women by 32 million due to China’s cruel “one child” policy from 1979 to 2015. Desperate Chinese men, especially those living in rural China, have resorted to trafficking women from other parts of China or neighboring countries to be their brides. Sometimes brothers or even fathers and sons from the same families would share a bride. Often, human traffickers and those families who “purchased” brides bribed local police and officials not to intervene.

Perhaps the Beginning of the End
Many Chinese demanded to know how China claims to be a superpower yet fails to protect its most vulnerable citizens; what’s the real purpose of all these surveillance tools if not to stop crimes; why there is no accountability for government officials; and why citizens aren’t even allowed to share their concerns on social media.

Xi and the CCP seem to forget that the Chinese people only accepted fewer rights and more political oppression provided the party would deliver safety and prosperity. Yet more and more people feel neither safe nor prosperous under Xi’s rule. The demonstrations were the last resort for people to express their discontent and demand accountability.

What made these protests even more remarkable was that they were leaderless. Unlike the 1989 pro-democracy movement, no single group or national figure led last week’s demonstrations. Protests erupted in multiple cities in China organically and even spilled over to foreign soils — Chinese students at several American universities, including Columbia University, staged their anti-Xi demonstrations.

Unfortunately, Xi will survive this crisis of his own making and remain in power. The Chinese government is reportedly taking action to crack down on demonstrators. But China’s “paper revolution” shows Xi has no firm control of the nation and its people. The “Paper Revolution” will not end the CCP’s authoritarian rule in China. Still, it is likely the beginning of the end of the CCP if Xi continues to forge ahead with his destructive policies.

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

Interesting that the Western media isn't reporting on the lockdowns being lifted...

Wouldn't you say???

dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA

It's not just the lockdowns people are upset about. Interesting that your media doesn't report the truth to you.

Wouldn't you say? No, you wouldn't. Can't offend the PWB.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/xi-jinping-his-own-words

Xi Jinping in His Own Words
What China’s Leader Wants—and How to Stop Him From Getting It
By Matt Pottinger, Matthew Johnson, and David Feith
November 30, 2022

BIRDMAN

They weren’t even showing the lockdowns

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

Yes... It was... Literally...

What does PWB stand for???

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

The lockdowns were real...
Just last week I was in one..

BIRDMAN

I understand that they weren’t showing it on the news here.

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

There's a lot the MSM doesn't show...

dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA

Sorry about that CD. Powers That Be. PTB. My Parkinson's is making it more difficult to type.

dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA

No one gets the truth from the media, worldwide. The fourth estate is worthless and isn't here for the people.

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

Ouch..
Sorry to hear that...
Thanks for clarifying...

dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA

It's all good. Some days it's really hard to type on the keyboard, and other days are fine. And how are you doing these days? Are you still trying new whisky and beer? Have you found any others you think are exceptional values?