Protests against Corona policy: Shanghai citizens rebel

For weeks, people in Shanghai have been protesting against the extremely strict corona policy. What is new is that the citizens are now joining forces – for example, to protest loudly at certain times.

The people of Shanghai are again protesting at the windows of their apartment buildings. They make noise with pans and pots. You want something to eat. Food parcels from the government. It’s an organized protest. People have arranged to meet in several parts of the city at a certain time. They distributed self-designed, digital posters in the chat groups in Wechat, the Chinese equivalent of Whatsapp. This is exceptional in China. There is no freedom of the press or freedom of speech there.

“In the past ten days we have had five new cases in our building. We are not allowed to leave the apartments nor do online group shopping. We have not ordered anything online since April 18 to comply with government rules,” says a woman in a phone call with the responsible authorities in her district. “But if we can’t order online and no food packages come, what should we eat?”

The recording of this quickly spread on social media before the protest, causing outrage. In some parts of the city, government aid packages are not arriving. The desperation increases.

Government speaks of “foreign agents”

The authorities in Shanghai responded to the protests with loudspeaker announcements and text messages to the citizens. It said that foreign agents had organized this action and that everyone should think carefully and distinguish between right and wrong.

Videos of individual protests were already circulating on social networks weeks ago. Like a man speaking directly to the government in the courtyard: “Let the Communist Party come for me. Where is the Communist Party? Where is Communism? What about the common people?”

Strict zero covid policy

The Chinese state and party leadership continues to adhere to the strict zero-Covid strategy. The recent outbreak of the Omicron variant poses new challenges.

Björn Alpermann is a China scholar and professor at the University of Würzburg. He sees the week-long lockdown and the resulting resentment in Shanghai as a setback for the Communist Party, which it did not want to afford this year of all times. Because the Chinese head of state and party leader Xi Jinping is aiming for another term of office this year.

“If the central government is no longer able to divert the failures in fighting the pandemic to the local level, it can also become dangerous for Xi Jinping’s leadership,” said Alpermann. “The Communist Party in particular allowed itself to be carried away into interpreting its comparatively good performance in this Corona comparison as a systemic issue and thus charging it politically. It was said: ‘We managed it better in China under the communist leadership of the party than the democratic states of the West, which acted far too hesitantly’. And that is now threatening to fall on the toes of the Chinese government,” says Alpermann.

Race between citizens and censors

The people of Shanghai are trying to express their displeasure, especially on social networks. But much that is critical is quickly deleted by the internet censors.

A special phenomenon was the video entitled “The voices of April” – a compilation of phone calls, impressions and recorded conversations from the past few weeks. It was shared very persistently over and over in a few hours in one day. A race against the internet censors who kept deleting it. Until it was no longer visible at the end.

Normally, censorship is something that Chinese citizens only marginally notice, says Alpermann. “But now we are dealing with a situation in which 25 million Shanghai citizens are loudly complaining on social media and other forums about how bad the supply situation is and are experiencing, like all these complaints, also creative forms of protest , to be deleted again.” It is a completely new experience for these people to become victims of censorship themselves.

It’s also about interpretation

If most people in the metropolis of Shanghai, which has a population of more than 25 million, perceive the lockdown and the poor supply as a negative experience, then the German sinologist Björn Alpermann assumes that it will be difficult for the Chinese state and party leadership themselves using cutting-edge propaganda to reinterpret this defeat as a victory against the pandemic.

To the ARD radio many say they will not forget what happened during the lockdown and cannot forgive the government. Like this man, who wishes to remain anonymous: “After this Corona outbreak, there will be a big change, namely a crisis of trust. Trust will have to be rebuilt. It is unlikely that things will go back to the way they were.”