Published: Less than 20 min ago
Blank sheets of paper, sarcasm and music.
In China, citizens are protesting against the country’s tough covid rules – and are using invisible strategies to escape the strict censorship.
A blank A4 sheet has become a symbol of the protests against China’s zero-covid policy, a rigorous set of regulations that continues to greatly affect the everyday lives of residents and the country’s economy.
The papers are completely white, as a silent comment on the country’s censorship that purges keywords linked to the protests from internet search engines.
“Positive” posts have instead started to spread on the messaging service Wechat and the social network Weibo, for example the words “right right right right” and “good good good”. But even such expressions have started to be removed, just like wording about “A4 paper”.
In several places, demonstrators sing the national anthem and the Internationale at their gatherings, and in Beijing a group of people shouted at the weekend “I want to do covid tests! I want to scan my health code!” – sarcastic slogans that have also found their way onto Weibo.
Regime criticism
There have also been protests against the zero-covid policy in the past, but in recent days they have escalated and expanded to include criticism of the regime itself in some places.
At the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing over the weekend, students held up signs with Fridman’s equations, referring to the Russian mathematician’s name, which is similar to the words “free man” or “freedom”, writes the AFP news agency.
There are also examples where protesters have shouted that they want freedom, and in Shanghai, for example, slogans like “down with the Communist Party, down with Xi Jinping” have been heard, a type of protest that is unusual in China.
Old statements from President Xi Jinping are used to support the demonstrations, including a clip where he says “Now the Chinese people are organized and are not to be trifled with”.
Sarcastic tone online
But even if some protests are aimed at the central government, the main thing the protests are about is zero covid politics, especially on the internet where it is not entirely unusual to criticize, often with a sarcastic tone.
– One advantage of sarcasm and irony in China is that you can bypass censorship by being ironic. That tactic has existed for 10–20 years, but the protests have a completely different intensity now than before, says Gustav Sundqvist, lecturer at Mälardalen University and analyst at the National Knowledge Center for China at the Foreign Policy Institute (UI).
– My guess is that many feel they are a little more protected if they express themselves sarcastically instead of straight to the point. But what is considered to cross the line in regime criticism is always a bit fluid, so we’ll see how this will be answered.
Loss of prestige for Xi
Whether the protests, which continue to grow, lead to any real change in covid policy remains to be seen. So far, the authorities have been relatively cautious, even though some people have been arrested.
According to Gustav Sundqvist, it is not impossible that there will eventually be a change in the covid policy, but it is definitely not obvious to the country’s top management.
– I think it would be a big loss of prestige, especially for Xi Jinping, who is very closely associated with the zero covid policy, he says and continues:
– But the party congress is already over and he has secured his third term as general secretary of the Communist Party, so he should be a little safer than if this had come before the party congress. Somewhere you have to weigh the loss of prestige against the fact that there may be more protests that affect China’s economy even more negatively.