How strict Covid lockdown measures may have resulted in 10 deaths.
An apartment building in the western region of Xinjiang, China, caught fire last week, killing at least 10 people and injuring nine others. Of course, fires happen, and while tragic, they don’t usually result in protest. However, when video footage of the emergency appeared to show that China’s ongoing Covid lockdown measures were at least partially to blame for the deaths of those people, it lit a fire under demonstrators.
A witness to the fire explained to VOA News that China’s extreme Covid restrictions appear to have contributed to the deadly event. “The fire exit door on the top floor was locked,” the witness said. “Then [firefighters] came down using the elevator to the first floor. Unfortunately, that exit was also locked by the government officials because of the [Covid policy].”
In the days since that deadly fire, a public outcry has been steadily growing across the country. Thousands of citizens are speaking out against the Chinese government in stunningly public — and creative — fashion, with protests popping up in at least a dozen cities this past weekend alone.
But the outrage at the source of these protests isn’t just about a fire. It comes from a collective frustration over a number of events, starting with the extreme measures that have been taken to control Covid over the last three years.
How China’s zero-covid approach has impacted its citizens
China’s zero-covid policy is exactly what it sounds like: An extremely strict set of regulations aimed at keeping the pandemic spread as minimal as possible. For citizens, that’s resulted in a never-ending version of the same nightmare many of us experienced temporarily in recent years: Intermittent lockdowns, economic turmoil, forced isolation, unclear shifts in isolation protocol, and more.
Last spring, for example, the entire city of Shanghai went under complete lockdown for two months. In September, the city of Chengdu went under lockdown as well.
In terms of preventing the spread of the virus, these lockdowns haven’t been successful. The number of infections in China recently hit record highs, according to The Hill, and vaccination rates are still extremely low among the elderly population, which is contributing to the death count.
In the meantime, the extreme measures taken against covid have had staggering effects on the Chinese people, particularly those in their 20s and 30s. According to The New York Times, youth unemployment recently reached 20 percent — a new record — and corporate profits are plummeting as well.
Compounding this emotionally and financially exhausting situation is a political crisis: President Xi Jinping secured a historic third term in October, only a few short years after he personally removed the two-term limit on the presidency. Xi has been the president of China since 2012 and has deployed increasingly authoritarian measures over the years.
Now, protestors are speaking out against all of it: The lockdowns and the unemployment, the isolation measures, the failure to save innocent people from a literal burning building, and the dictatorship at the helm.
Why protestors are using blank sheets of paper during protests
If you happen to see videos or pictures of these ongoing protests, you might notice something particularly interesting taking place: People are holding up blank sheets of paper instead of signs with clear messages.
The blank papers, in this case, are both the message and the medium. They symbolize government censorship and are used as workarounds in response to China’s incredibly strict policies against dissent. By avoiding the use of any potentially triggering words, the protestors are able to avoid being arrested — at least, for now.
Matt Schrader, an advisor for China at the International Republican Institute in Washington, explained to The Washington Post that “It’s the idea that when no form of protest at all is acceptable to the state, then the only thing that you could possibly hold up that won’t offend anybody in power is a blank piece of paper. It’s the idea that any real form of protest online will mostly be censored.”
To The New York Times, Xiao Qiang, a researcher on internet freedom at the University of California, Berkeley, offered another perspective on the blank page approach.
“People have a common message,” Xiao said, “They know what they want to express, and authorities know, too, so people don’t need to say anything. If you hold a blank sheet, then everyone knows what you mean.”
Young students are using another clever way to express their frustration while evading explicit verbiage: They’re holding up signs that show a math equation created by a physicist whose surname in Chinese is a homonym for “free man.”
For now, protests show no sign of slowing, and in fact, seem to be picking up speed. In response to the collective outburst, the Chinese government has increased its police presence in a number of cities. President Xi has not made a statement in response to the outcry.
