Rose Tang was stunned when she saw videos last week of crowds in China chanting in Mandarin, “Give me liberty or give me death.” It was a phrase the Brooklyn resident had last heard more than three decades ago, when she was one of the student leaders at the pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. It took her back to the afternoon of 3 June 1989, when she spotted military convoys rumbling toward the protest camp. She threw on a black outfit and rode her bike into the square, determined…
Tag: Protest
China’s anti-government protesters are risking much. They deserve our admiration – and support | Xuyang Dong
On Monday evening hundreds of people gathered at Sydney’s town hall to mourn the deaths from a fire in Urumqi in Xinjiang province in China, where 10 people died and nine others were injured. The gathering was not just a memorial. It was a chance to show support for the protests that erupted in China in the days after the blaze. <gu-island name="TweetBlockComponent" deferuntil="visible" props="{"element":{"_type":"model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TweetBlockElement","html":" Hundreds at Sydney's Town Hall in solidarity with the protests in China pic.twitter.com/K5j4q99dm6 — Lewis Jackson (@lewjackk) November 28, 2022 \n","url":"https://twitter.com/lewjackk/status/1597171596447580161?s=20&t=v5JJ8aQ4vi-ohR8uwpc5HA","id":"1597171596447580161","hasMedia":false,"role":"inline","isThirdPartyTracking":false,"source":"Twitter","elementId":"6d5ea207-2786-4a12-b383-f2edb640c114"}}”> As the Chinese national…
The Guardian view on the future of China’s unrest: more complex than it seems | Editorial
Among the Communist rhetoric cleverly repurposed by China’s anti-zero-Covid protesters is a phrase that Mao Zedong employed: a single spark can start a prairie fire. When a political system is so rigid, observers can easily fall prey to one of two conflicting tendencies. The first is to seize upon any significant unrest as the first crack in the edifice, which could bring the whole system down – as when the death of Mohamed Bouazizi precipitated the Arab spring. Since such collapses are usually astonishing at the time, even if explicable…
From blank paper to alpacas: how protesters in China are voicing their anger – video
The largest protests in a generation erupted in cities across China over the weekend against the government’s zero-Covid policy. The most widely used symbol in the demonstrations has been a blank sheet of paper. It symbolises censorship, and may also, some Twitter users pointed out, be read as a reference to the deaths last week of 10 people in a building fire in Urumqi, Xinjiang, which was blamed on lockdown restrictions that protesters believe prevented the residents from escaping in time. In China, white is a colour used at funerals. But…
Warning signs: inside the 2 December Guardian Weekly
Discontent over China’s zero-Covid suppression policy came to a head last weekend in a series of unprecedented protests across the country. The civil disobedience – remarkable just for the fact it was happening at all in a state where such behaviour is rarely tolerated – seemed to have been smothered by police by the start of the week. Even so it revealed to the world signs of a hitherto unseen fracture in China’s totalitarian political system. The magazine’s cover design this week reflects the power of blank paper and the…
Tuesday briefing: What’s behind angry protests against China’s ‘deadly’ Covid restrictions
Good morning. After days of escalating protests across China unprecedented since Xi Jinping came to power a decade ago, the state hit back on Monday night. “There was a massive police presence [at the expected protest sites] in Shanghai and Beijing questioning passers-by,” the Guardian’s Helen Davidson, covering the story from Taipei, told me this morning. “They scared people off, which was obviously the intention.” And yet the unrest that has grown over recent days and weeks remains a sign of an extraordinary rupture in China’s political system. “This isn’t…
Police tighten security in Shanghai after two nights of protests
Chinese police have barricaded a street in Shanghai where protesters have gathered for the last two nights in anticipation of further rallies against the government’s rigid zero-Covid policies. Since Friday, a wave of protests has spread across multiple cities in China, prompted by the death of 10 people in a building fire in Urumqi in Xinjiang. Much of the region had been under lockdown for more than three months, and people blamed the lockdown for the deaths. Gatherings held to protest or to mourn the victims were held in Beijing,…
China: Video shows BBC journalist’s arrest during Covid protest – video
Video shared on social media shows the moment BBC journalist Edward Lawrence was arrested by Chinese authorities while covering an anti-lockdown protest in Shanghai. Lawrence was dragged away by police shouting “Call the Consulate, now.” Protests over Covid restrictions have spread to several cities across China and were triggered by a deadly fire at a residential high-rise building in the city of Urumqi, in the country’s western Xinjiang region. Videos of the incident posted on social media led to accusations that lockdowns were a factor in the blaze that killed…
The Guardian view on bearing witness: when the mourners too are gone | Editorial
“We conquer death, dear children,” proclaimed Hebe de Bonafini, leader of Argentina’s Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. She devoted decades to ensuring that her sons, “disappeared” by the military junta in the late 1970s, were kept alive, if only in memory. The Mothers at first demanded the return of their children and then the punishment of those responsible for seizing and killing them. The risks they took were immense: the group’s founders were abducted and thrown into the ocean from “death flights”. But as politicians, the church and almost…
‘Xi Jinping, step down!’: anti-lockdown protests spread across China – video
Demonstrations have broken out in cities and university campuses across China amid widespread anger at Covid lockdowns. The wave of civil disobedience was triggered by an apartment fire on Friday in which at least 10 people died in the west Xinjiang region. In an unusually bold act that appeared to indicate the level of people’s desperation, a crowd in Shanghai called for the removal of the Communist party and President Xi Jinping in a standoff with police on Saturday, according to videos circulated on Twitter. Chinese people usually refrain from…