Chinese students and professors at OU watched from afar as the largest demonstration in decades unfolded in China last week, sparking hope for the future of their home country.
Mass protests erupted after an apartment building in Urumqi, China, caught fire, killing 10 people. The flames took more than three hours to extinguish due to the building’s blocked-off entrances in compliance with China’s zero-COVID policy.
Demonstrators included students at various Chinese universities including Peking University and Tsinghua University in Beijing and Communication University of China, Nanjing.
Bo Kong, co-director for OU's Institute for U.S.-China Issues and professor of Chinese and Asian studies, said the protests were anticipated, because the lockdown has posed difficulties in the lives of Chinese citizens and caused economic turmoil.
China’s zero-COVID policy is one of the toughest COVID-19 protocols in the world, according to BBC.
The policy’s measures included strict lockdowns imposed by local authorities and mass testing in places where cases were reported. Those who had COVID-19 were isolated at home or in government facilities. Businesses and schools closed in lockdown areas, shops that weren’t selling food closed and lockdowns were continued until no new infections were reported in the area.
Kong said he worries for the most vulnerable groups, like the elderly, who cannot risk contracting COVID-19, and blue-collar workers who can’t stay home and get paid for remote work.
The New York Times reported that the zero-COVID policy hurt many small businesses and drove youth unemployment to a record high of 20 percent. In China’s 41 industrial sectors, profit fell 3 percent from January to October.
Li, an international graduate student from China, said the lockdown has been particularly challenging for his mother who teaches children. He said she’s had to adapt to a remote workforce by utilizing technology and providing equipment to her employees, which has posed income-related challenges.
Li requested OU Daily use only his last name for personal security.
Considering the economic and social restraints of China’s COVID-19 policy, Li said he’s grateful for the young people in China protesting against the lockdown.
“I feel pride. By seeing those kinds of protests, I feel hope for the country,” Li said. “Protest is like a way to broadcast our voice to let everybody know what we're thinking.”
Ping Zhu, professor of modern Chinese literature at OU, described the recent protests as a turning point in Chinese history because it was the first time the country has seen mass protests since 1989.
In April 1989, Chinese students protested in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square against corruption and inflation, and called for political and economic reforms.
The protests continued into late May and early June as the number of demonstrators grew to tens of thousands and began to include workers and ordinary citizens.
On May 20, Chinese leadership imposed martial law in Beijing, but protests prevailed until the nights of June 3 and 4, when the People’s Liberation Army stormed Tiananmen Square with tanks, reportedly killing over 200 people and injuring over 3,000.
Now, protests in China are rare because, according to The Times, the Chinese Communist Party has cracked down on dissent and built a high-tech surveillance state.
China implemented widespread phone-tracking devices and some of the largest police DNA databases in the world, according to The Times. Analysts also estimated that more than half of the world’s surveillance cameras are in China.
However, there were at least 23 demonstrations across 17 Chinese cities on Dec. 1, according to CNN.
“I admire the sudden courage of those young people,” Zhu said. “It has been accumulating over the past three years because … of the zero-COVID policy.”
The Times reported that Chinese police have used their surveillance tools to identify those who attended protests. Then, they forced them to pledge not to protest again.
During the protests, some demonstrators have held up white pieces of paper instead of shouting their grievances to illustrate the limits of criticism in China, The Times reported.
“The central government should step in and deal with it instead of (protesters) stepping out and holding a piece of empty paper,” Li said. “That is just a little meaningless.”
Zhu said while the nationwide lockdown triggered the protests, frustrations regarding the loss of freedom of expression and civil rights fueled the demonstrations. She said the Chinese government will not change its regime any time soon, but mass protests are a start.
“I don't know how China can transition peacefully to a more democratic society at this point,” Zhu said.
The lockdown caused flights to China to spike in cost, some around 10 times pre-pandemic costs, The Wall Street Journal reported. A one-way economy ticket from San Francisco to Shanghai, with a stopover in South Korea, went for $4,000 in November, which excludes a mandatory quarantine at a hotel that costs hundreds of dollars or more, WSJ reported.
A student from China at OU, who has requested anonymity due to safety concerns, said they have not been able to go back to China in three years. They said because of the lockdown and the expensive plane tickets, they will likely not return until next summer.
In response to the series of protests, China announced rollback measures to its zero-COVID policy on Wednesday, including limiting lockdowns and ordering schools without known infections to resume regular classes, NPR reported.
The National Health Commission announced that COVID-19 tests and a clean bill of health displayed on a smartphone app would no longer be required for people outside of vulnerable areas. It also limited the scale of lockdown to individual apartment floors and buildings, rather than entire districts and neighborhoods, according to NPR.
Li said the Chinese government wants to reopen the country, but local leaders force harsh restrictions on areas within their control.
In a statement from the National Health Commission, it wrote officials at a local level under pressure to prevent outbreaks “oppose and overcome formalism and bureaucracy, and take strict and detailed measures to protect people's life safety and health to the greatest extent, and minimize the impact of the epidemic on economic and social development.”
Kong said China cannot open up the country all at once due to the risk of a medical crisis.
According to NPR, China has fewer than four intensive care beds per 100,000 people, which is about a quarter of the rate in the U.S. The potentially overwhelming number of hospitalizations could cause the medical system to collapse.
Additionally, China’s COVID-19 vaccines include CoronaVac, which was found to be 51 percent effective and Sinopharm, found to be 79 percent effective. Pfizer and Moderna are at least 90 percent effective.
About 87 percent of China’s population has at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, as of June. However, 65.8 percent of people over 80 have completed the primary series of vaccinations, and about 40 percent of those received a booster.
Zhu said the U.S. and the rest of the world should be paying attention to the lockdown and public dissent in China because the world is a global village affected by the actions of every country.
In the U.S., people displayed solidarity with the protesters in China and held their own demonstrations at Harvard University and near Chinese consulates in New York and Chicago last week.
Li said he watched these demonstrations occur in the U.S. on the news, appreciative of the activism for his country, even from across the world.
“I really want to take part in it rather than standing by and seeing and doing nothing,” Li said. “(I’m glad) people see our generation as having huge hope and passion for the country."
