There is no centralized leadership for today’s movement - no headquarters, no spokespeople. (China tightly restricts the number of foreign films that can be shown in the country.) In Beijing a friend of mine posted a photo this week of graffiti that read: “Give me back my youth.”īut there are also stark differences that suggest 2022 is no 1989. The recent protests similarly expanded to demands for freedom of speech and an end to censorship, freedom of media and journalism, and even freedom to see the movies people want most to see. Similarly, both movements grew to embrace additional goals: in 1989 the freedom to choose one’s job and to own property, for higher wages, the right to strike and, presciently, for top leaders to end nepotism and to divulge their assets - issues that irk China’s rank and file today. This suggests participation by older generations when I was in Beijing during the 2008 Olympics, young people with whom I spoke had never heard the song. Crowds in both cases sang the socialist hymn “L’Internationale” as a rallying cry. There are a few distinct similarities between the 19 manifestations.īoth were sparked by mourning - this past week for the victims of the Urumqi fire, as well as other Chinese people who have died or taken their lives because of Covid-19, and in 1989 for Hu Yaobang, a widely liked former Party chief born into poverty and seen as an everyman ally of ordinary people.īoth protests spread quickly to other cities - in 1989 because of news media and their unabashed support for the hunger-striking students, and in 2022 because of social media that flashed messages and images online faster than Chinese authorities could scrub them from the internet.īoth protests united students and the local citizenry with common goals - social liberalizations in the name of democracy in 1989, and rolling back “zero Covid” in 2022. And according to at least one newspaper report, Beijing is starting to allow some who test positive to quarantine at home instead of crowded, unpopular isolation centers. Indeed, a handful of Chinese cities in the past few days said they were easing pandemic restrictions by loosening Covid testing requirements and allowing some markets and restaurants to reopen. They might just succeed, at least in part, even if they fail. The same might turn out to be true of the anti-lockdown protests. The Tiananmen Square protests had significant long-term effects on China, even if they weren’t always acknowledged as such. And while the regime isn’t sending in tanks, it’s having police suppress the expressions of dissent.īut even if the protests fade away and Chinese leaders stay in place, that won’t necessarily mean the uprising failed. The protests have taken all by surprise - China’s leadership, police and aggrieved citizens themselves. Virulent demonstrations began there and soon spread to some 20 cities. The protests erupted after a fire last week in the far-west city of Urumqi that left 10 dead videos seemed to show firefighters unable to go in the apartment building, and victims unable to escape, because of lockdown measures. Chinese television broadcasting the World Cup competition from Qatar focuses on the action on the field, avoiding wider views that would show thousands of boisterous - and maskless - fans, which would outrage Chinese viewers, many of whom can’t leave their buildings just to take a walk. The recent protests were ignited by intense frustration with Xi’s draconian “qingling” or “zero-Covid” policy that has seen frequent, widespread and long-lasting lockdowns with schools and restaurants closed, and residents unable to leave their compounds, or even their buildings, to shop for food.Ĭhinese people are fed up with the measures at a time when much of the rest of the Covid-affected world has reopened. The Tiananmen Square protest was violently suppressed, and similar public disdain for the ruling party and party leaders has been unheard of in China for more than 30 years.īut now, for the first time since 1989, Chinese citizens have rallied in public to call out the country’s top leader, in effect demanding regime change. “Li Peng xiatai” was a common refrain, which students and citizens shouted with raised fists, and ebullient youths wrote on banners they lifted from cars parading up and down Beijing’s Chang’an Boulevard. When I was covering the student-led protests at Tiananmen Square in 1989, there were frequent calls for senior leader Deng Xiaoping and Premier Li Peng to be done with. Those slogans brought back some intense memories for me.
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