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
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