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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am.

This week, streets across China filled with angry protestors.

Some held blank pieces of paper instead of signs, to protest censorship, others chanted ‘Down with Xi Jinping’.

They’re the most significant protests China has seen for 30 years, according to analysts. But how have they happened, under the surveillance regime of the state?

And what do they mean for the future of the Chinese Communist Party and for Xi Jinping and the China he’s trying to shape?

Today, journalist Louisa Lim, on the protests igniting across China, despite the shadow of Tiananmen.

It’s Wednesday, November 30.

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RUBY:

Louisa this week we've seen something highly unusual in China, something that we haven't seen, at least on this scale for a long time. There’s people in multiple cities, out on the street, protesting. So can you tell me, what is the catalyst is for this?

Louisa:

We've seen these really unusual protests in China and they're in the major cities. You know, these started as protests to mourn people who died in a fire in Urumqi. There'd been a fire in an apartment block and ten people had died.

Archival tape -- BBC:

“Now, there was an eruption of anger online in China after a deadly fire, with some people questioning whether pandemic restrictions prevented people from escaping.”

Archival tape -- Protest:

“Lift the lockdown!”

Louisa:

So at first, they kind of started as mourning and remembrance rallies. But very, very quickly, these turn into political rallies with protesters shouting slogans like Down with Xi Jinping.

Archival tape -- Protesters:

“Communist Party” / “Step down!” / “Xi Jinping” / “Step down!”

Louisa:

It’s interesting, it happened at a weekend. Weekends are often a time when, for example, Internet censors don't work. They have the weekend off. And that might be one reason why so much video was able to circulate, which also may have had the effect of inspiring people in smaller places to protest as well. I mean, I've seen reports that there were protests in, you know, more than 50 universities and at least 16 cities.

Archival tape -- Protesters:

“Freedom!”

Louisa:

And you know, these are protests that we really haven't seen in China in so many places on one issue at the same time, really since 1989 and the Tiananmen movement.

So this is a huge challenge to the Communist Party and to Xi Jinping himself, particularly, as you know, he is being mentioned personally and, you know, people shouting slogans like China doesn't need an emperor.

RUBY:

And Louisa the backdrop for these protests is the mounting anger that we're seeing over restrictions around COVID 19. So could we talk about that for a moment? How severe have those restrictions been and what has it been like to live in China over the last few years and months?

Louisa:

Oh, the restrictions have been really severe and quite arbitrary.

You know, many of the major cities are in some form of lockdowns, but these lockdowns are kind of imposed and lifted almost arbitrarily.

You know, it could be that someone in an apartment block in the same compound, but, you know, quite a long way away. Has a single case of COVID and the entire block will be locked down for two weeks at a time.

Archival tape -- ABC News:

“This video of Beijing residents stopping officials from taking a two year old in full PPE to a quarantine camp, has gone viral across the country”

Louisa:

Even when the lockdowns are lifted, people are being sent for testing sometimes everyday or every other day. There's a lot of waiting in queues. I mean, life is really effectively on hold in China and people have real, sort of COVID exhaustion, lockdown exhaustion.

Archival tape -- ABC News:

“At 40,000 new cases each day. China is not going back to zero…”

Louisa:

And I think the fact that they're now seeing that lockdowns are being lifted and the rest of the world is pretty much going on with life as normal means the fact that China is cleaving to this COVID zero policy is even harder to bear.

RUBY:

And many of the protesters are young people, are students. So can you tell me a bit about why that is and what life has been like for that cohort of society.

Louisa:

Like everywhere in the world. Life has been really hard for students. You know, this is supposed to be such an exciting time in their life that they've basically spent three years pretty much under lockdown. And it's sort of almost like a house arrest in universities doing online classes, not really being able to, you know, meet other people and enjoy themselves. And I think there's just a really extreme level of frustration and despair. You know, there's been a movement called the Lying Flat Movement, which is kind of like quiet quitting amongst young people where they really, you know, are suffering from this kind of existential crisis. You know, what is the point of living under these conditions? And in the last few months, one really odd manifestation of this was the crawlers.

Archival tape -- Student crawlers:

“Students are crawling in a circle on the field in front of the university's library. It's a way for college students in Beijing to passively confront the high-pressure environment.”

Louisa:

Students started meeting at night, literally, to crawl around campus on their hands and knees in circles.

Archival tape -- Student crawlers:

“The advocates of this crawling movement wrote: you can wear a mask, don't communicate unless necessary, insist on crawling every day to cultivate a good physical and mental state.”

Louisa:

Because there was literally no other form of entertainment that they were allowed to do.

Archival tape -- Student crawlers:

“The students here are also issued a tutorial on how to make a paper dog out of a delivery box.”

Louisa:

There were some who are posting they were combating meaninglessness with meaninglessness. So there's really a kind of existential despair, I think, amongst China's young.

RUBY:

And Louisa, what are these protesters risking by going out onto the streets? And specifically, I suppose, being critical of the Chinese government and of Xi Jinping. What could happen to them?

Louisa:

The risk is high. China takes a very hard line against protest and in particular, political protest. Since the Tiananmen movement in 1989, the strategy has really been to clamp down on political protest as quickly as possible, to isolate protest leaders and to punish them really in a draconian fashion in order to avoid other people getting ideas. So I would say that people are risking, you know, long jail terms. They're really risking everything to protest. And that's really what makes it so extraordinary and so unprecedented.

You know, for so long, Chinese people have really accepted this idea that with economic progress, life is getting better and maybe that would be enough. And suddenly it doesn't seem to be enough anymore at all.

RUBY:

We'll be back after this.

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Archival tape -- Beijing Radio:

“This is radio Beijing, please remember June the 3rd, 1989, a most tragic event happened in the Chinese capital Beijing, thousands of people, most of them innocent civilians were killed by fully armed soldiers when they forced their way into the city.”

RUBY:

Louisa, it's hard to talk about these protests in China without bringing up what happened three decades ago at Tiananmen Square. And there are clear parallels. The Tiananmen Square protests, they were originally largely made up of students and they spread across multiple cities with protesters' demands becoming bigger as the protests grew. And I think we're seeing a version of all of those things now. And these current protests, they're also the biggest that we've seen in China since that moment in 1989. So knowing what we do about how the protest back then ended, how should we view these protests today?

Louisa:

I mean, I think it's instructive to look at the lessons that China learnt from Tiananmen. And one of the lessons that was learnt by the Communist Party was that this should never happen again, that they should never be sort of large scale, coordinated, cross society demonstrations that could get to that point. And so after Tiananmen, what happened was the Communist Party really put in place a stability maintenance machine and, you know, fearsome internal security force to try and sort of nip dissent in the bud before it even started. And that's really been very effective. So I think it's noticeable that we had over the weekend these, you know, quite large and quite noisy protests. And there were videos of them that were circulating. So people who weren't protesting were able to see what was going on because the censorship machine was really overwhelmed. But by Monday night, it seemed that things had evolved and there was a much higher police presence on the streets in Beijing and Shanghai. We saw new measures being put up. We saw some easing of COVID regulations and more censorship online to stop people seeing what was happening. So it looks like that kind of machine is trundling into action, the machinery of repression is being rolled out and it's being rolled out at speed.

RUBY:

Can we talk a bit more about that, about the machinery of oppression? Because it was a month ago that we saw Xi Jinping elected for a third term and throughout his time as leader of the Chinese Communist Party have tightened their control of information and their surveillance powers. So just how strong is that grip on free speech inside China and how has that changed the environment that these protests are happening in.

Louisa:

COVID has really allowed China a chance to perfect and improve its security state. It's really brought the level of repression, I think, down to an individual level where, you know, people need apps on their phones and the apps track your COVID status. And it means that, you know, there's a lot of places that you can't go and that kind of almost personal surveillance, you know, the ability of the techno authoritarian state to track people on an individual basis has really been facilitated by COVID. There's also a lot of security cameras in China. And I have no doubt that the authorities are able to, given the amount of video that was circulating, that they'll be able to track down people in them. So I think that what COVID has done has been to increase that level of repression. You know, in the past, those kind of very intrusive, repressed tools of repression were being used in Xinjiang, in northwestern China, where China was trying to crack down on the ethnic Uyghur population, but not so much amongst Han Chinese.

Archival tape -- ABC News:

“For days, police across China have shown unusual tolerance for protests.”

Louisa:

But I think COVID has changed that.

Archival tape -- ABC News:

“Not anymore. One by one, protesters were dragged away in Shanghai as others yelled at police to free them.”

Louisa:

Yeah, it will be interesting to see whether these protests then ramp up the level of paranoia even more. You know, we're seeing reports that policemen were making people go through their phones and delete footage of protests and things like that.

So these protests may again have increasingly repressive effect.

RUBY:

And Louisa, as we speak, these protests are far from becoming an organised mass movement, but the Chinese government is surely concerned about what's happening. So what kind of threat do these protests really pose - to the government and to Xi Jinping?

Louisa:

These protests do pose an enormous challenge to China because this is an issue that unites Chinese people, no matter rich or poor, rural or urban. Everybody is worried that the zero COVID policy will affect their ability to make a living. And, you know, everybody is fed up with it. And particularly now when the rest of the world is pretty much going on with life as usual. So I think it's an enormously difficult moment for Xi Jinping, but it also kind of underscores the fragility of his rule that the very moment when, you know, we saw him having that unprecedented third term in office after the Communist Party meeting and filling the Politburo standing committee, which is the highest tier of the Communist Party with his allies at that moment, we're seeing such widespread popular discontent.

You know protests like this will force some kind of response on the part of the state, whether it's repression or loosening zero COVID or a mixture of both. One of the main things is that these measures, the sort of COVID zero measures, have been so repressive that they've really forced people in China, ordinary people, to think about politics in a way that they haven't necessarily had to in the past.

You know, when even the most basic entertainment, you know, the ability to go out and have a meal or meet friends when that is denied for, you know, on and off for two or three years, then people really start to think about the nature of the society they're in.

I think people are utterly, utterly fed up. And, you know, I mean, we can see that they're willing to risk everything. I think it may have taken the Communist Party by surprise.

It may also be a reflection of the nature of Xi Jinping's rule that it’s a system of strongman rule, where he's surrounded himself by yes men, people who will support him. And I wonder how much insight they really have into how people feel on the ground.

RUBY:

Louisa, thank you so much for your time.

Louisa:

Oh, it's a pleasure.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today,

The Nationals have been widely rebuked after their decision, announced this week by party leader David Littleproud, to oppose the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

Prominent Indigenous leader Noel Pearson said of Littleproud, “He’s like a kindergarten kid, not a leader, the Nationals have foisted the mantle of leadership on a boy.”

The decision of Littleproud and The Nationals also faced scrutiny from within the party, with the leader of the Western Australia branch of the party saying that her state team would support the Voice.

And aviation workers plan to strike next Friday, in a move that could cause major disruption in airports across the country.

The United FireFighters Union are in a dispute with a governing aviation body over pay and conditions and alleged that job cuts dating back to last year have put travellers at risk.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. See you tomorrow.

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