Flames crept their way through a 21-story apartment building in far western China in the city of Urumqi. A panicked group chat of the apartment’s residents became filled with desperate messages. In one audio message a woman gasped, “On the 16th floor, we don’t have enough oxygen… Soon our children won’t be OK”.
Another person added a plea about the people in the apartment, “They wouldn’t be able to open the door. Can you break into it and take a look? There are many children inside.”
This shocked many people in the area who heard the reports, not because it was a large tragedy, but because it had taken firefighters three hours to control the fire. People in Urumqi believed that the delays occurred in part because of China’s pandemic restrictions, which have kept the people in Urumqi locked down for more than 100 days now.
The families, neighbors and friends of the 10 people who were killed in the fire also
blamed the pandemic restrictions, claiming that the pandemic controls imposed by Chinese authorities around, and inside the apartment building had delayed the fire response.
Videos of the event spread all over WeChat after the event, showing the water from the firefighters’ hose falling short of the flames, as they continued to creep up the building. It also showed firefighters struggling to get close to the building as they worked their way around barriers. Since WeChat is a very popular Chinese social media, this footage spread quickly, sparking fears in many across the country who had also been locked down for a while that they were also at risk of similar disasters. Over time, the opinion that the death tally may have been lower if it were not for China’s strict zero-tolerance Covid policy grew. Unsurprisingly, the government denied that to be the case.
In response to this growing fear, and a feeling that the government’s strict policy was to blame for the tragedy in Urumqi, protests broke out across the country. The protests spread
The above map shows the cities in which protests over zero-covid lockdowns took place
within days all across the country, becoming the largest show of public defiance against the Chinese Communist Party since the 1989 pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen square. This has raised the question among Chinese authorities: how should we stop these protests that pose a risk to our government? The answer has been a combination of ramping up censorship, and reducing the restrictions slightly to ease public discontent.
Last Tuesday China started a censorship campaign in response to the protests, in which the Cyberspace Administration of China issued “guidance” to companies including Tencent Holdings Ltd. and ByteDance Ltd., the Chinese owner of short video apps TikTok and Douyin. Within this guidance the Cyberspace Administration of China “asked” these firms to increase the size of their internet censorship teams’ staff. They also pressured the firms to focus on censoring any information relating to the protests, especially any information about university protests or any information about the fire in Urumqi that ignited the protests in the first place. While this action already constituted a heavy-handed censorship effort, the Cyberspace Administration didn’t stop there, they went after virtual private networks (VPNs). Chinese officials held meetings with e-commerce companies and internet content companies, ordering them to perform a sweep of all of their content, to remove any content
that may help inform people about how to use or purchase VPNs. Why? The primary reason was that VPNs allow the people in China to circumvent a lot of Chinese censorship, by using servers in other countries to access the internet instead of those in China. This truly became an issue the Cyberspace Administration of China was willing to crack down on when it came to light among officials that the protesters were using VPNs to spread images, videos, and messages relating to the fire in Urumqi that was the catalyst of the protests.
While censorship has ramped up, covid restrictions in China seem to have become slightly more lenient in response to the protests against China’s Zero Covid Policy. Here are a few examples of covid policies becoming less restrictive in recent days reported by the Washington Post:
In Beijing, officials pledged not to lock down residential buildings for more than 24 hours at a time.
The southwestern metropolis of Chengdu called off the construction of a massive facility intended to house more than 10,000 people, in a sign that mass centralized quarantine could be on its way out.
Public transportation in Urumqi, the regional capital of Xinjiang, partially restarted Monday, while delivery services resumed Tuesday.
These actions may suggest that Chinese officials have realized that their zero-covid policies are unsustainable, however many are doubtful that this is the case. Regardless, Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party appear to be in trouble. The reason is perfectly spelled out by the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board which notes that, “An authoritarian regime can always do what it does best—surveil, coerce, lock down. But it lacks a mechanism to gain public support for the pain that could accompany the abandonment of zero-Covid.” In other words, if China were to fully abandon their zero-covid policies, it would delegitimize their government, leading to potential political instability. Thus, things could remain scary in China for a while but the takeaway from this may actually be a positive one. With VPNs becoming more prevalent, the people of China have been able to circumvent censorship and protest against the government in large numbers. Hopefully, people will continue to come together when they view injustices in society, and eventually balance will prevail. (Information Sourced From: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post).
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