China Brief – Much Cause But Little Recourse For Popular Discontent

Citizens in as many as 28 cities, including Shanghai, Beijing, and Chongqing staged spontaneous protests on their campuses or out on the streets. In late November, these protests escalated dramatically, with the proximate cause being the deaths of a few dozen residents in an apartment building in Urumqi: Those trapped could not flee the inferno because city operatives were enforcing strict anti-pandemic policies, blocking the building's fire escapes. The protests quickly shifted from anger against China's "Zero Covid" policies to other grave errors of the Chinese Communist Party. One female student at Tsinghua University was filmed crying out, "If we don't dare to speak because we fear arrest, I feel that our people will be disappointed in us. As a Tsinghua student, I would regret that for the rest of my life!" and counterparts in Chengdu demanded an end to "One-man rule," the return of popular elections, and freedom of expression. Police arrested dozens of participants in the protests, which seemed to have run out of steam by early this year. The protest movements have undergone a marked re-orientation after Beijing succumbed to popular sentiment and scrapped all pandemic-related restrictions early December 2022. Most of the dissatisfied homebuyers have taken some sort of action in protest against either the developers or the local governments.