Beijing quietly mobilises to quash signs of dissent
Government steps up vaccinations of vulnerable adults
Reacting to China’s boldest and most widespread protests in decades, the security apparatus built by Communist Party leader Xi Jinping is mobilising on multiple fronts to quash dissent, drawing on a decades-old tool kit of repression and surveillance.
In a meeting of the party’s top security leaders, reported in state media yesterday, officials were ordered to “resolutely crack down on illegal and criminal acts that disrupt social order”. And by evening, the demonstrations already appeared to be smaller and more scattered, with new videos emerging on social media showing only groups of residents in several different locked-down developments demanding to be freed.
At the same time, the government announced it would step up vaccinations of older adults. That move is deemed crucial to easing China’s tight Covid-19 controls that have fuelled public anger, signalling that as Beijing suppresses dissent, it is also moving to address the problem underlying the protests.
Security personnel and vehicles have blanketed potential protest sites. Police officers are searching residents’ phones for prohibited apps. Officials are going to homes of wouldbe protesters to warn against illegal activities and are taking some away for questioning. Censors are scrubbing protest symbols and slogans from social media.
Yet even as Xi rolls out the police, he is projecting an unruffled appearance of business as usual. He has stayed silent about the rare open challenge to his rule that erupted in the protests, including calls for him to step down. He appears to be wagering that by outwardly ignoring the demonstrations he can sap their momentum while security services move in and online loyalists try to discredit protesters as tools of US-led subversion.
“They’re saying as little as possible for as long as possible,” said William Hurst, a professor at the University of Cambridge who studies politics and protest in China. “If they speak, it could inflame the situation, so it’s better to sit back and pretend nothing is happening.”
Yesterday, the People’s Daily, the party’s main newspaper, featured Xi’s talks with the visiting Mongolian president and a front-page celebration of Xi’s decade in power, but not a word about the protests, China’s most widespread since the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement of 1989.
Still, there seems no doubt that inside the guarded seclusion of the party’s Zhongnanhai leadership compound in Beijing, Xi and his advisers have been monitoring the unrest and plotting a response. Since the protests of 1989, Chinese leaders have fixated on the dangers of anti-government social movements, determined to nip them in the bud and avoid the trauma of another bloody crackdown.
Even so, the protests that broke out in parts of Shanghai, Beijing and other Chinese cities over the weekend appeared to catch leaders off guard.
The collective public anger first welled up in Urumqi, a city in western China where at least 10 people died in an apartment fire last week. Many people have said, despite official denials, that the deaths were caused by pandemic restrictions that prevented residents from leaving their apartment block. Protests over the tragedy escalated into wider denunciations of China’s pandemic policies, as well as calls from some for democracy, a free press and other ideals anathema to the country’s authoritarian rulers.
This week, China’s security forces have regrouped, making new demonstrations much more difficult and risky. In Hangzhou, a prosperous city about 160km southwest of Shanghai, police broke up an attempted demonstration on Tuesday, shouting at passersby and dragging away one woman who was screaming. Dozens of people also confronted officers who had detained someone, chanting “release them”.
In the southern city of Guangzhou,
about 100 police officers wearing white protective clothing to possibly ward off Covid-19 banged their clubs on their riot shields as they strode through a street, warning people not to hang around.
Officers across China have been visiting protesters’ homes or stopping possible ones on the street. They check their phones for apps banned in China, delete pictures of demonstrations and warn people not to take to the streets again.
Officials appear to be trying to quietly address the most common of grievances about China’s Covid-19 restrictions, which have disrupted life, schooling and business.
Many residents have complained about a 20-point set of rules issued by the government on November 11, which at first seemed to promise an easing in pandemic restrictions. However, it has made little effect on the ground, where local officials are
under enormous pressure to stifle Covid-19 outbreaks.
Since the protests over the weekend, local governments across China have said that they will stop residents from being locked in their homes any
longer than necessary to prevent expanding outbreaks. Yesterday, an article from Xinhua, the main state news agency, urged officials to show compassion to frustrated residents.
“All areas and departments must be more patient in relieving the anxieties of the public,” the article said. “The fight against the pandemic is complex, arduous and repetitive, and we must listen to the sincere voice of the public.”
Avoiding any direct mention of the protests by Chinese leaders or in state media is likely a deliberate strategy to downplay their significance. In 1989, the students who occupied Tiananmen Square galvanised in fury after the People’s Daily condemned them as infiltrated by agents of turmoil. The unrest this time has not reached that scale, and officials seem to have learned their lesson.
“The moment that the central leadership takes an official line, they are dignifying the protests with an official response and admitting that they must be reckoned with, which gives them a status that they would rather deny them,” Hurst said.