By Laurie Chen and Jessie Pang PBEIJING/HONG KONG, Reuters public amid state censorship.
The wave of civil disobedience that erupted on November 25 last year was an unprecedented decade in power under President Xi Jinping, which was marked by widespread repression of civil society.
While protests against the 0-COVID policy were temporarily suppressed by police, they helped push for the three-year end of some of the world’s strictest pandemic measures.
“Many protesters have experienced being part of a civic collective for the first time,” said Huang, who fled to Germany in March after narrowly avoiding arrest during the Shanghai protests. “For the Chinese, it’s like a first love. “
Six participants based in China and overseas told Reuters they felt a mixture of hope and ambivalence towards the demonstrations, which they said helped to end COVID restrictions but failed to achieve lasting political change.
Many spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals from the state following last year’s widespread police crackdown. Reuters could not verify the total number of protesters arrested last year, some have since been released.
This year, on the anniversary weekend of the protests, there were no demonstrations in Beijing and Shanghai. There was also a heavy police presence at protest sites. Cities with gigantic overseas Chinese communities, as well as New York, London and Washington DC, held commemorative events. .
Huang said many of his friends in Shanghai walked past the main protest site to mark the anniversary, but didn’t do much else. “It’s a forbidden remembrance, like June 4,” he said, referring to the largely censored 1989 crackdown on student protesters in Tiananmen Square.
During last year’s protests in Beijing, some demonstrators also defended press freedom, democracy and human rights.
Some of the protesters Reuters spoke to, as well as observers, said the events had helped raise awareness of the political strength that other Chinese have.
An Italian-based Chinese artist and blogger known as “Professor Li,” whose Twitter account has a viral news feed about the protests, told Reuters that the protests “have taken the civic consciousness of the Chinese people to a new level, and more people have understood that they want to stand up to protect their rights.
The protests also preceded small-scale acts of subversion this year, including politically charged costumes during Halloween celebrations in Shanghai and widespread mourning over the death of former Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, who was sidelined by Xi.
“I never imagined that the protests would resonate so much among the population of China, where there is a high degree of surveillance,” said a 30-year-old protester in Guangzhou.
“Through it all, I learned that I wasn’t alone,” she said. “This has made me less pessimistic about China’s long-term political situation. I’m still pretty pessimistic!
Other China-based participants were more ambivalent, saying they would not publicly commemorate the protests or talk about them with friends due to safety considerations and a general reluctance to relive memories of the pandemic.
One of them, a 28-year-old worker at a Beijing technology company, said police had warned her and a friend not to participate in any activities this weekend, even though they had not been hired by the government before.
These warnings, and the reality of life in China, may dampen hopes for wider social change, she added.
“Even if some young first-time protesters did have a political awakening, this was probably soon overtaken by mundane concerns like the bad economy, property market and high unemployment,” she said.
(Reporting by Laurie Chen in Beijing and Jessie Pang in Hong Kong; Additional reporting by Casey Hall, Nicoco Chan and Brenda Goh in Shanghai, and Yew Lun Tian in Beijing; editing by Miral Fahmy)
Disclaimer: This report is generated from the Reuters news service. ThePrint assumes no responsibility for its content.
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