On the evening of November 20, hundreds of millions of Chinese viewers experienced half an hour of amazement. The FIFA World Cup was broadcast live from Qatar. Due to the “zero Covid” policy and the home confinements imposed in several cities, entire families were gathered in front of their screens. What was their surprise to see the festive atmosphere reigning in the Doha stadium. In the public, no mask, but pennants and happy faces of multiple nationalities. Far from the empty stadiums in Beijing for the Olympic Games last winter… Even before the end of the ceremony, messages were flowing on Chinese social networks: “Are we living on another planet? Is this China which cuts itself off from the rest of the world or the rest of the world which no longer wants China?” Since then, the messages have been taken down by the censors and the shots of the Chinese cameras refocused on the players, but this opening ceremony was the first to reveal the very deep malaise that has been running through Chinese society for several months.
Four days later, a second event, tragic, created a new start. In Urumqi, in the remote province of Xinjiang, a building caught fire. Many residents have not been able to escape, the emergency exits being blocked, while this city of 3 million inhabitants has lived in confinement for more than a hundred days. Result: ten dead. Horrified, the Chinese relayed this information on all the networks, easily making the analogy with their own situation, when nearly a third of the population has been placed in confinement since the beginning of the year and the doors of the apartments are sometimes cordoned off from the outside. The awareness of a need for freedom which, for more than a year, had been running through the Chinese elite and its youth, now reaches a much larger proportion of society.
Just thirty years ago, when Deng Xiaoping relaunched the policy of openness and reform after three years of closure of China accompanying the repression of the democratic movement of Tiananmen, a “social contract” had been imposed on the population: no more question of get involved in politics, but the opportunity to enrich themselves through economic development. Having no other alternative, the Chinese tacitly accepted. From month to month, small freedoms have appeared. First, that of circulating within the country. No more life imprisonment in his place of birth and a highly organized career within a “work unit” which, from the 1950s to the beginning of the 1990s, punctuated professional and personal life. In the space of two generations, a massive rural exodus has transformed 400 million rural people into urban youth and lifted them out of poverty.
Within the cities, the “neighborhood committees” have seen their influence diminish, to the point of virtually disappearing. Now free to choose their job and even to undertake, the Chinese have developed the private sector and have grown rich: first a middle class, then a bourgeoisie. At the same time, lifestyles were being liberalized for the new generation, while the proliferation of media, then the appearance of social networks, offered new forms of expression.
The reasons for a deep crisis
The climax was reached in 2008, just before the crackdown in Tibet and the Summer Olympics in China. The onset of the economic crisis, the diplomatic crises, then the outvoting of the current reformers in the fall of 2010 led to a new roadmap. Priority, now, to the fight against corruption and inequalities. Only a small minority worried about the limitations that were mounting with the growing surveillance of society, via countless cameras and the use of digital tools. The population as a whole remained satisfied, the counterpart being economic success, the feeling of security and the ease of communicating, obtaining information or consuming from their mobile phone.
The strict application of the “zero Covid” policy since January 2020 has accelerated the reduction of these freedoms. No more international trips that could be organized on the fly. The QR code of the anti-Covid application has become a sesame governing daily life. The neighborhood committees have rebounded in power, while the “white guards” have multiplied, the nurses in cosmonaut outfits who, from morning to evening, take samples. Until the middle of 2021, the population accepted, convinced of being protected from the killer virus undermining the outside world. But the multiplication of bankruptcies, the complexity of travel between provinces, the news filtering on the trivialization, abroad, of the pandemic, and the deadlines for relaxation constantly postponed have led the Chinese to wonder. The new confinement of the capital, more rigid than in 2020, affects a population reaching the end of its resilience, in particular the students retained on their campuses for three years and the youth struck by inactivity. Especially as anxiety grows with the increasing risk of being tested positive, even asymptomatic, and sent to isolation centers.
The demonstrators were only a few hundred, but their images are relayed on social networks, as indirect criticism to circumvent censorship and historical references. The reminder of the Communist Party’s ambitions to “develop a scientific government”, just a century ago, reached millions of views, as did Deng Xiaoping’s speech in 1992, relaunching the opening of China. Internet users ask who benefits from these millions of medical analyses. Intellectuals plead for an end to mass testing and more freedoms. They are worried about the risks of slippage and repression. For now, the power remains silent.