Frustration and complaints over China’s zero-COVID policy have led to giant protests in more than a dozen cities, on a scale seen since the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.
These youth-led social protests involved open calls to replace not only COVID-19 policies, but also governance and politics. The big message of China’s scenes: suppressing political debate in a centralized bureaucracy can cause social unrest overnight despite stepping up censorship and security enforcement.
For now, the Chinese Community Party has responded by competing to ease some restrictions on the virus despite the large number of cases, indicating softer stances in the face of emerging protests.
But the key check for President Xi Jinping is before him: what has he learned from the anger on China’s streets, in its universities and factories?
After the Tiananmen Square student protests in 1989, which were triggered by the death of reformist leader Hu Yaobang, the CCP ruler learned from the incident by adopting a collective leadership style more open to political debate within government and society.
Later Chinese leaders, along with Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, moved away from strongman politics to adopt a power-sharing style in the most sensible sense. sensible leaders such as Zeng Qinghong (vice president of China under Hu Jintao), Li Yuanchao (vice president during the early years of Xi’s reign) and political theorist Wang Huning.
This shift toward an appearance of internal party democracy fostered political debate to other degrees and complicated a decentralization procedure that allowed local officials to announce economic development. Some observers have described the procedure as an example of the CCP’s “authoritarian resistance,” in which a single leader can simply dominate policymaking in all spaces and had to share strength with other colleagues in the Politburo and its Standing Committee, the party’s most sensitive organs.
The political game shifted from a traditional winner-take-all style to a style of checks and balances, in which all members of the Politburo Standing Committee were invested with almost equivalent political authority, resulting in greater distribution of power and high-level checks and controls. The authoritarian character of the regime has been mitigated through fragmented policy implementation, relatively moderate censorship, and political debates.
Xi replaced the game in 2012, when he replaced Hu Jintao as CCP general secretary and introduced a “recentralization” procedure that cemented his strength as the party’s most sensible leader.
Faced with a disgruntled society irritated by the source of income disparity and corruption, Xi borrowed from Mao Zedong’s tactical manual and suggested army officials and officers reconnect with others, while reinforcing barriers in discussions of concepts such as democracy and freedom of expression.
With the tightening of media control through the ruling party and the correctness of ideology, opinion leaders in China have given the impression of being more cautious than before when it comes to expressing other perspectives on public policy or human rights. This halted the movement toward more vigorous policies. debates within the CCP under Jiang and Hu. The result: a greater threat of political errors because there are fewer checks and balances.
China’s initial good fortune in fighting the spread of the coronavirus has been hailed at home and abroad, but increasingly, the economic and social burden of its draconian zero-COVID policy has become unbearable.
Anger over the likely endless chain of blockades spread like wildfire and public discontent with the restrictions reached a boiling point.
Throughout the year, others expressed frustration with access to health care and complained about difficulties buying food due to overloaded delivery centers. were asymptomatic. Others have expressed anger over the policy of separating young children and COVID-positive toddlers from their parents.
Recent protests suggest that all those emotions are now coming together. These are the first nationwide protests in decades, involving university students, small business owners and Chinese citizens. It was unleashed through a chimney in Urumqi, Xinjiang, which killed 10 other people believed to be in an enclosed building.
It also follows a recent twist of fate in Guizhou province, where 27 bus passengers died en route to a quarantine facility. The government deserves to have thought about fatigue and 0 COVID-like complaints. But this would only have been imaginable. si lawmakers were more receptive to court cases on social media and more consultative with public fitness professionals and social groups.
The tightening of censorship in a year of force transition (the CCP held its twentieth congress in October) has weakened officials’ sensitivity to society’s seething anger over the closures and continued testing.
After mass protests in opposition to COVID-19 restrictions in Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United States, the Chinese government has become aware of the dangers related to strict quarantine and lockdown measures. However, no serious discussion has taken place on COVID-19 policy in the country. public domain due to intensified censorship and surveillance.
If Xi wants more evidence of the risks of the path he has taken, he wants to see nothing but the consequences of Jiang’s recent death. The former CCP leader and Chinese president was mourned by many Chinese. Jiang was not Hu Yaobang, in fact, He came by force as a result of the brutal repression of the Tiananmen Square protests. However, many represent a bygone era in which China was perceived as relatively freer and more tolerant of differing opinions.
By now, it is clear to China’s leaders that it is unrealistic to expect to completely eliminate COVID-19 through lockdowns and repeated testing, given the high transmissibility of the Omicron variant and the large number of asymptomatic cases.
The recent protests themselves have not shaken Xi’s political authority, however, unless he adapts, the government may face a developing political backlash opposed to his COVID-19 policies. There is also a broader lesson here: the public manifestation of anger sent a transparent signal to leaders that public policy debates, where a diversity of viewpoints are allowed, are imperative to understanding the pulse of the masses. It’s a slogan Xi himself has emphasized. Now he knows the dangers of not translating those words into action.
The perspectives expressed in this article are those of and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial position.