But if you only got your news from Reddit, you’d think the people are preparing to overthrow the government and establish a new liberal country.
There were protests where people were singing the national anthem too, but it seems like western libs are the only people who can protest the government without wanting to topple it
https://www.dw.com/en/protests-spread-across-china-amid-zero-covid-anger/a-63906795?maca=en-rss-en-top-1022-rdf
the CPC has changed policies due to popular protest in the past, but Americans know nothing's going to change without toppling the US government
what policy changes did the protests kicked off by George Floyd's murder cause? none. a couple cities pretended they might rebuild their police departments but it got scuttled
Police departments got more funding to balance all the defunding that (never) happened
IIRC one city actually did vote to defund the police, but then the city council had elections and all the defund people got kicked out and the new council reverted the plans. Democracy!
From what I understand, there are other ways to achieve zero covid, just they have been relying on lockdown. I think a lot of Chinese want zero covid, but are tired of the lockdowns.
Yes, the central govt already give directive of smarter way implementing covid zero, but Xinjiang local govt fumble that by choosing the most restrictive. Shenzhen doesn't have this problem
Seems to be all too common in China. The local govt fucking up the central government's directions.
Well yea. In the end, they're just human, they all want to do their best to serve peoples and for their job. Some gonna make mistakes and some gonna flourish, the one that flourish is gonna go on to the central govt while the one f*ck up gonna be demote after cleaning up. This is just another test on their governance ability. From western perspective, it's easy to vote out clown A for clown B, pretend that all will dandy and business as usual. But that's not happening in China, they're serious.
have they tried playing videogames? plenty of us voluntarily don't leave home very much
Man, I get why they’d be tired of lockdowns but I really don’t think these people know what they’re asking for.
I would kill someone to have exactly the same policies in place here as China’s had. For any complaints about zero-covid, I’ve got 10 reasons why full-covid is worse
This is classic people in socialist countries not knowing how good they got jt
Shanghai has some of the most NATO brainworms in all of China so no surprise they'd be doing this
I listened to an East German friend complain of poor services and inferior products; the system did not work, he concluded. But what of the numerous social benefits so lacking in much of the world, I asked, aren't these to be valued? His response was revealing: "Oh, nobody ever talks about that." People took for granted what they had in the way of human services and entitlements while hungering for the consumer goods dangling in their imaginations.
The human capacity for discontent should not be underestimated. People cannot live on the social wage alone. Once our needs are satisfied, then our wants tend to escalate, and our wants become our needs. A rise in living standards often incites a still greater rise in expectations. As people are treated better, they want more of the good things and are not necessarily grateful for what they already have. Leading professionals who had attained relatively good living standards wanted to dress better, travel abroad, and enjoy the more abundant life styles [sic] available to people of means in the capitalist world.
:parenti: Blackshirts and Reds
The American propaganda machine is so strong and how bad it actually is here (in many ways, not just covid) seems so insane as to be unfathomable
If China had a similar COVID death rate to America, they would have something like 3-4 million dead. You have to go back to the famine that occurred during Great Leap Forward to get an event worse than that in China.
I read one comment saying that the ten deaths from the fire is worse than anything covid would do, so... yeah, I'm sure there is some of that.
I wouldn't be so optimistic lol. There's been so much lib shit social media brainworm going on in the Chinese web sphere since the Urumqi fire. It's one thing to have residents of lockdown-ed neighborhoods to gather and demand clarification on who authorized the lockdowns, whether the local commune has the power to do so, and whether said lockdowns are following the newest measures released by the gov that tries to limit the scales of lockdowns, etc. It's another thing to organize an entire protest around freeze peach and false rumors (e.g., the rumor that the apartment units of the fire victims were bolted cuz of the covid measures).
Fucking students in 1989 almost sold the country out to the westoids. I fucking hope it doesn't happen again.
Edit: how do I stop doomscrolling when I have no grass to touch :agony-minion:
During Hu era, China had 40k riot according to western source, this is child play after all the experience. Especially with how they organize on Telegram. imo, the CPC should give out ultimatum for getting Vax. Can't let the anti vax hold the country back
Yes. But because of their non vaxx attitude, the cpc have to maintain zero Covid, which wear a lot of peoples down, which led to this protest. If the elderly vaxx rate going up, the govt could relax more restrictions without overflowing the hospital
Because places with high vaccination rates don't have people catching covid and dying? Australia's vaccination rate is 95% 2nd dose, 75% third dose and Covid is still 3rd most common cause of death. A full third of people have or have had covid and 1 per 1600 people have died this year alone. I wouldn't be surprised if vaccination is less effective than strict mask mandates and social distancing.
I do think some of the other protests are in solidarity with the people in Urumqi. The ones in Shanghai are definitely infiltrated.
Try as they might, Chinese libs can never wash the stench of white worship, and average Chinese people will see them as the Western bootlicking white worshiping losers they are. As China becomes stronger and the West weaker, the stench will only get more and more noticeable.
If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn't go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom
I liked it because it felt like there was just more community. Neighborhoods are dense and walkable, you could go to your town square and watch the aunties do their dances or get street food etc. Cost of living is low and violent crime is rare. You picked a bad example in Beijing though because it's not my first choice to live in, it's crowded, smoggy (I've heard this is better now), and way too expensive. Most people will live in the outer ring roads and commute to work near the inner rings which makes traffic horrible. The subway system is extensive and frequent which makes this less painful but you definitely have to cram yourself during the rush hours.
Typical urban life in China is probably more represented by tier 2/3 cities. Tier 1s are built different.
There are all sorts of protests going on right now. Some of them shouting anti-CCP and anti-Xi slogans. I don't remember the 1989 protests but they were a fraction of the size of this and spread out mostly around college campuses with Tiananmen square being the largest of about a dozen protests across the country. I've seen a lot more than a dozen protests in the past week alone in China.
What culminates in the next few days/weeks between protesters and police may change the course of China for awhile. Most Chinese under 30 don't care about communism or capitalism they care about raising a family, buying a home, etc. As living standards go down for younger generations this will continue to exacerbate protests. Especially as they can see the rest of the world has moved onto something beyond Zero Covid.
Will Xi and the CCP relent and listen to protester's demands or choose to crackdown? There have been regional but not national crackdowns on protest in mainland China since 1989; however, back in 1989 that was mostly college-aged kids and this current batch of protests you can see a much wider demographic of protesters. These protests are not something that will be easily quelled. So unless the CCP relents and loosens restrictions this could get ugly.
China and Xi realize they don't have the hospital beds to let er rip like the United States or Germany did without killing one million or more of their senior citizens. The amount of fully vaxxed over 80's in China is only ~40%, and unlike in Western countries more than half of those over 80 in China still live in multi-generational homes. There will be no escape from Covid in China once Zero Covid is gone.
It is shameful that the West refused to share MRNA tech with the Chinese when they asked, which would have made the vaxxing process much easier; but, that being said, nothing short of vaxxing the elderly to 80-90%+ is going to allow China to curb Covid controls w/o mass deaths. If the CCP do remove Covid controls and Chinese parents/grandparents start dying en masse it will likely inflame even more aggressive and long lasting protests.
This is the 1st major challenge of Xi's new consolidated CCP leadership, and the world waits with bated breath on what happens next. When China trade stops that is ~1/3rd of all global manufacturing gone overnight. We are likely going to see cooler heads prevail and the most onerous restrictions lifted, as a mass crackdown seems too bullheaded for Xi's governing style.
I'm pretty sure there are other ways to implement zero covid so I'm sure they are going to pivot to something else
don’t remember the 1989 protests but they were a fraction of the size of this
What ? There were ~1 million + people all over China that participated in various protests and hundreds of thousands in Beijing alone . Hundreds of thousands of PLA troops were mobilized all through out. Not to downplay whats happening rn as "just another day nothing spacial at all" but nothing i have seen seem like even a fraction of the 1989 protests in size and intensity or even potential by even the most exaggerated "china watchers" reports
Rows of apartment blocks and condos that are locked down are chanting and singing all night. Even besides the social media aspect - some protest videos have been shared over 100 million times, these are not just street-level protests.
300 million Chinese have experienced being in a fully-locked down city at some point in the past 3 years some multiple times. Zero Covid saved many lives, and not just in China, but it is also three years in and if every few months 10's of millions of Chinese citizens are being thrown into lockdown -- for what would be just another day of covid infections in the rest of the world -- the anger and resentment is just going to keep growing.
The intensity of this protest may not be as directly challenging to the CCP as the student-led protests in 1989, but these still pose a major challenge for Xi. The anger and frustration against the Zero Covid policies are far more widely spread and sympathized with than the abstract demands of the students in 1989. The challenge for the CCP will be quickly addressing the concerns of the protesters, because these protests are becoming a forum for general grievance against the government.
You understand that , despite these protests indeed being serious and stuff needing to be addressed from the CPC, it's hard to take your comments seriously when I point out how your initial specific comparisons and outlook for the protests is obviously wrong and over exaggerated by a huge margin and you try to double down with "actually no a lot of Chinese people have lived through lockdowns in the last year and many didn't like and viral videos" . Yeah duh ok, still doesnt make your initial comment any less inaccurate and sensationalist as fuck
1989 was not mostly college aged kids, it was mostly an ideologically and politically uneducated urban proletariat lashing out at a perceived reduction in material conditions brought about by the introduction of market-oriented economic reforms, with the kids taking the spotlight because they were the only ones who looked like they had ideas (newsflash: they didn't) and also because kids are more photogenic than unemployed middle aged civil servants.
one thing this current batch does have in common with 89 is the recurrent theme of liberals wanting to shoot themselves in the foot and then turning around and blaming the government and communism when it turns out that things have consequences. tbh joker me really wants the government to just rip the fucking bandaid off just to see the inevitable 'who could have done this?' cope blasted all over social media, because the one thing these people are all operating under is the assumption of ITS JUST A FLU BRO and that 'of course there will be only MINIMAL blowback' in the form of elderly family members kicking it but that's ok because they have an overpriced mortgage to pay, the privilege for which they leveraged like 90% of their assets 3x over to get.
chinese urban gentry deserve all the consequences of the capitalism they so desperately want.
public/private partnership bureaucrats get the wall too, it's those fuckers who are too deep in the fucking hole to release some of that real estate blood money for even the slightest bit of direct pandemic relief for the most marginal.
NPR was reporting them as the Biggest Protests on Record and all I could do was laugh.
