Chinese citizens fight back against CCP. Photo courtesy NBCNEWS.com
Many Americans are watching something they have never seen in China. The last time the world witnessed massive protests against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was over 33 years ago in Tiananmen Square. For those old enough to remember, the iconic picture of the lone dissident standing in front of a Chinese Tank (“Tank man”) encapsulated the event. Starting around a week ago, the people of China have again risen up for freedom. This protest has taken many Western observers by surprise, due both to mainstream media failures in lack of coverage and to the massive state control over the Chinese people. Multiple factors have made it inevitable and with geopolitical consequences. Let me explain.
First, despite the exponential economic growth of China, the nation is facing substantial demographic decline causing unrest. For a number of years, owing to China’s one child policy, the Chinese birthrate has been plummeting. During the past decade of Xi’s rule, annual birthrates fell by more than 45% even with the CCP ending the one child policy in 2016. As of around a year ago, the Chinese population started decreasing and is expected to plummet. On current trends, by 2100 the population will go from 1.4 billion to around 800 million. Further exacerbating this spiral, Obstetrics expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Professor Yi Fuxian, asserts that China’s unemployment and general anxiety over continual lockdowns have caused Chinese to hold off on marriage and childbearing. By Fuxian’s estimates this dynamic has reduced the number of births in China by around a million (beyond the other trends) in both 2021 and 2022.
Within the context of the demographic decline, the Chinese have had to endure the CCP’s draconian and inhumane zero Covid policy. In practice, this has meant that starting in early 2020, tens of millions of Chinese have been locked down at various times. Parents have been separated from children due to quarantine. Pets killed throughout cities. People locked in apartments for days or weeks at a time, without basic necessities like food. Though the CCP COVID response was praised by many Western health officials and the World Health Organization (WHO), it has been utter cruelty to the Chinese. Though the CCP policy initially kept deaths low, it was quickly challenged by the highly transmissible newer variants which weren’t stopped by the lockdowns
Unfortunately, the Western media directed it focus on the response of the Trump administration, ignoring what the Chinese have been suffering. The reality was that the CCP refused to import better foreign vaccines, while accepting lower rates of vaccination. Those factors, combined with less general access to healthcare, caused CCP concerns that China’s population of 1.4 billion people could experience the highest death rate, thereby embarrassing the CCP. I remember travelling to Italy in April 2021, and seeing a group of Chinese tourists traveling in full (Covid) protective body suits.
In September 2022, 27 Chinese died in a bus crash while being forcibly taken to the Guizhou quarantine center (note: Only two Covid-related deaths were reported in the province since the pandemic began). This story seeped throughout China, despite CCP censorship. Later, thousands of employees in an Apple iPhone factory under inhumane conditions fought riot police and tore down barricades. Chinese started sharing more of these types of stories, and began to see that the rest of the world, like fans at the World Cup without masks and unrestricted.
The final spark for the explosion of protests came when 10 people died in a building fire in Urumqi, Xinjiang. Urumqi had been in harsh lockdown for over three months. The people died as a result of being locked in the burning building. Anger was exacerbated by the CCP response of blaming the victims for not “rescuing themselves”. On Friday Nov 26 in Urumqi, people took to the streets singing “Rise up, those who refuse to be slaves”. By Saturday crowds gathered in Shanghai and demanded Xi Jinping step down. By Sunday massive protests spread to Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Wuhan, Lanzhou, Nanjing, and universities throughout China.
In addition to protests in solidarity with Urumqi, a “white paper” protest began over lack of free speech. A student at Tsinghua university, Beijing was holding a single blank white sheet when it was ripped from her hands by authorities. She refused to leave, and was soon joined by hundreds of Chinese students and others with white sheets. One young protester explained to Reuters: “The white paper represents everything we want to say but cannot say” and another claimed “We launched the blank paper remembrance movement. Do we say anything on the paper? No. All accusations are in our hearts. All Thoughts are in our hearts.”
The CCP will try to appear relatively easy on protesters while under media scrutiny, but will later mete out harsh punishment to individuals. However, it will use extreme to quell protests that appear, in the slightest, to threaten the regime. The current protests are spread throughout China, making it more difficult than with Tiananmen Square, but protesters still face becoming the next “Tank man”. America cannot remain silent in this fight, and must go on the record in full support of protesters. Freedom is God’s gift, and we stand behind the Chinese people in taking it back from the CCP.
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