China clamps down amid ‘white paper revolution’
Censors struggle to block flood of protest content
Chinese censors scrubbed images of white paper from the internet yesterday as Beijing clamped down on protests against President Xi Jinping. Demonstrators have held aloft blank sheets of paper to symbolise a lack of freedom of speech in the biggest show of dissent in the Communist country since protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Online discussion and news coverage of the protests was banned, as security forces yesterday thronged the streets of Beijing and Shanghai after nationwide protests called for political freedoms.
All signs of the social media-driven protests were erased.
But Weibo and Wechat users posted images of empty sheets of paper in support of the “white paper revolution”.
Videos of the protests were overwhelming censors in a country notorious for state surveillance.
A deadly fire last week in Urumqi, the capital of northwest China’s Xinjiang region, sparked the protests with many blaming Covid lockdowns for the deaths of 10 people.
Demonstrations began on Saturday and spread to the streets and university campuses in Beijing and Shanghai, with some demanding that Xi resign.
Two men were taken away by security yesterday after each holding a sheet of white paper for five minutes in Dongfanghong Square of Hunan University.
There was a heavy police presence near landmarks in cities and blue barriers around Wulumuqi Road in Shanghai, named after the city of Urumqi.
It had become a gathering place and was the scene of clashes with police on Monday but anyone visiting it or taking pictures now were questioned or detained. Police removed street signs so that protesters could not find it.
Police in Shanghai, Beijing and Hangzhou have been checking mobile phones for overseas chat apps or involvement in the protests. Covid-19 is infecting record numbers three years after it emerged in Wuhan. China reported 40,052 cases on Monday.
Beijing announced it would no longer set up gates to block access to apartment compounds where infections are found.
Guangzhou, the hotspot in China’s latest wave of infections, said some residents will no longer be required to undergo mass testing.
Urumqi and another city in Xinjiang announced markets and businesses in low risk areas would reopen this week and bus services would resume.— Telegraph Group Ltd