Observations and reflections after the Sitong Bridge banner protest: “Courage is gained through practice, and trust grows through connection and joint action”

On October 13, protester Peng Lifa (Zaizhou) hung two banners on the Sitong Bridge, a transportation hub in Beijing. They not only put forward six demands, but also called on everyone to participate in the action of removing the "dictatorial traitor" Xi Jinping. All content related to the protest on the Chinese Internet has been comprehensively censored and deleted, leaving almost no room for sharing and discussion. The banners on the Sitong Bridge and the courage of Peng Lifa (Zaizhou) have inspired and inspired many overseas youth/student groups to create and post posters on and off campus to catch up with the brave. In the past two weeks, we have seen different protest slogans being continuously spread online and offline at home and abroad, creating a huge ripple effect and opening a window for accelerated politicization. As "non-pink Chinese students and overseas youth" who pay attention to China issues, on the one hand, we are excited and excited to see more and more students starting to participate in civic actions; on the other hand, we have also observed the difficulties and opportunities encountered by poster-posting activities in various places, as well as the various reactions of approval and disapproval due to the diversity (or lack of) richness of the poster content.

How to understand the current situation of overseas Chinese youth activists from this ripple effect, and think about what other actions can be taken, are issues we need to face together.

(This article is compiled from online discussions. The following content is a summary of the participants’ speeches.)

Opportunities and challenges encountered in the communication process

Fear is a frequently used keyword in the contributions to accounts such as @北方廣場 and @民民日报. Indeed, fear may be one of the main challenges faced by overseas students who want to and are participating in actions; it not only affects whether we take action, but also how we take action and with whom we build community connections. We first need to acknowledge everyone's fear, because a large part of fear is realistic and real. However, we also have a complex relationship with fear.

On the one hand, many international students are troubled by being forced to come out politically, and are also troubled by the confusion and criticism of people in other communities about their fears (for example, they think they are too conservative and politically apathetic). The screenshot of "French colleague asked me why he was alone" was widely circulated. Behind this question is the gap in the understanding of Western democratic society about China's centralized censorship and surveillance system. People need to start facing up to the fact that the state apparatuses of Russia, Iran and other countries are no longer on the same level as China. China's control level has been vertical to the details, and everyone is under surveillance. The entire society is highly atomized, and social connections are completely destroyed. In such a centralized society, we can only see lone wolf actions and lone braves. Therefore, we also agree with the comments on the article "Beijing Sitongqiao Protest" - instead of criticizing the small number of protesters, we should pay more attention to the voice of this person. In a place where the default value is silence, having a voice is a kind of resistance.

On the other hand, we also know that we need to resist this fear rooted in our bodies - the most concrete and intimate manifestation of the violence and censorship of the state apparatus.

We need to train ourselves to refuse to become the claws of the state machine to expand outward and inward. We who are overseas have certain conditions, and we also need to step out, examine, and manage fear. It is also in the process of breaking through fear that we realize that everyone's default is loose sand. We need to think together how to rebuild community and trust in this relatively safe and free place, and push the overseas community forward and outward as much as possible. Below, we briefly talk about the challenges and opportunities that non-pink overseas youth encounter when they come into contact with other communities.

1. With other Chinese students

For the Chinese youth who posted posters on and off campus, their concerns did not come from harassment from local people or local law enforcement agencies, but from reports or even violence from the "little pinks" around them. On the one hand, they noticed that many of the international students who were usually politically apathetic were also politically enlightened by the banners and slogans on Sitong Bridge; on the other hand, many posters posted by international students were torn off by the "little pinks", and even "Xi's quotations" were posted on them. How to select Chinese classmates who stand in the middle ground to dialogue and build trust, and how to deal with the opposition and poster tearing phenomenon of the "little pinks" around them are the problems of many overseas activists.

Some international students in the middle of the street may not dare to pay attention to the issue of Sitong Bridge in public spaces, but relatively private spaces still have the possibility of dialogue. A friend shared that he was studying on a campus with many Chinese and international students. Last week, he saw a poster posted by someone else in the bathroom. People passing by could learn about some reports on the incident through the QR code on the poster. He observed that some Chinese people did not dare to take pictures, linger or scan the code. But at the same time, he also heard two international students talking to each other in the bathroom: "Do you dare to scan?" "Then I'll try it." Because of this relatively closed space and posters, they "saw" the existence of this news and formed a preliminary communication. This friend shared that if our slogans become ubiquitous, it will make people have to discuss it. Some friends also shared that many people in their respective places have responded to the tearing of posters. For example, after posting a poster "You can't tear off thoughts. Thoughts are eternal" next to a regular poster, the poster in response has not been torn down again for the time being.

Some people also feel relatively safe because they have many like-minded international students around them. They have participated in activities with Hong Kong and other Chinese friends on campus and have a certain foundation of community trust. They can quickly find a few like-minded friends to carry out activities such as posting posters and banners. One speaker concluded that the personal relationships accumulated in daily life and the relationship between individuals and other communities are very important in mobilizing activities.

2. Contact with activists in Hong Kong and Tibet

Many overseas Chinese youth said that they collaborated with Hong Kong people for the first time in this protest. One speaker mentioned that after the banners hung on campus were cut down by other international students, students from the Tibetan and Chinese American communities at school helped to put them back up. It was also because of this opportunity that they began to establish a real connection with each other. On major submission platforms, we have seen many people begin to reflect on their previous attitudes towards the Hong Kong citizens' struggle.

But unlike the more experienced Hong Kong Tibetan protesters, the mainland youth usually act on their own, and overseas students who lack local support sometimes do not dare to go to large-scale rallies or marches. Some mainland youth also feel that their "timidity" and concerns about not having an identity, family members in China, and returning home are often misunderstood by other communities with more organizational experience as overly conservative and politically apathetic. These experiences have made us realize that there are cognitive differences between communities, and this is precisely what we need to do more dialogue and connection.

At the same time, we actually have a lot to learn from Hong Kong people, Iranian protesters, and other ethnic and international actor communities, such as methods of external communication and communication, and how to form our subject and narrative in Western society. We also need to learn and try to step out of our own fear and safety zone. Centralized surveillance should not be a universal excuse for us not to shoulder our own responsibilities.

3. With (leftist) Asian Americans and other North American indigenous communities

In recent years, under the mainstream "anti-China" public opinion in the United States, many Asian organizations are very wary of the demonization/othering of China, which will evolve into violent incidents against local Asian communities. Therefore, many Asian groups and organizations will not criticize China or stand up to support the voices of protesters from China. But such a perspective is discriminatory in itself, and it indiscriminately equates the concepts of country, regime, and people. We have also observed that many Western left-wing communities have similar attitudes. Based on their criticism of Western imperialism led by the United States, they regard China as the opposite or victim of American/Western ideology. Therefore, criticism of China is equivalent to recognizing and continuing to support the expansion of Western imperialism. Some also see China as a beacon of socialism through a rose-colored filter. These views are actually the same as the perspectives of many "little pinks", which are based on a single social cognition concept of binary opposition and no distinction between concepts. Many overseas young people who have contact experience said that we still need a lot of dialogue and deconstruction in contact with these communities.

Finding space for overseas operations under the scrutiny of a massive transnational centralized authority

As international students, we have been trying to find a balance between the two extremes : on the one hand, we need to face up to the difficulties and build a safer space; on the other hand, we do not want this fear to further help the state apparatus to censor ourselves and the community. We still need to tell the stories of activists standing up and create our own narratives in seemingly empty places. Under this premise, what else can we do or continue to do?

1. Create and promote more intersectional and diverse discussions

The content of the Sitong Bridge banner is particularly important because it clearly puts forward several demands and ways to achieve them: strike, strike, and dismissal. But at the same time, this poster and similar posters that emerged in the early days of the poster-posting campaign also have many limitations. On popular contribution accounts such as @北方廣場 and @民民日报, we observed that many Chinese students’ political enlightenment began after experiencing and witnessing the “zero-COVID” epidemic prevention policy in the past two years and the tragedies it caused. Participating in the poster posting was also the first time for many people to participate in political action.

However, based on our observations of some phenomena in the Asian and overseas student communities during the Black Lives Matter movement, we hope that this awakening and empowerment will not only focus on our own group . We hope to broaden overseas students' understanding of other groups, and also want to convey connections and support with other oppressed communities.

Slogans not only have a propaganda function, but also an educational function. When making slogans, we need to express what we think, but also consider why everyone should care and how to reflect on this matter. Especially when facing overseas groups, we need to restore the original appearance of the matter and the environmental background in which it occurred. If the slogans only have anti-Xi/anti-communism, they can neither explain the dilemma we are facing nor hit the crux of the systemic problems. It is also not conducive to forming a narrative and it is difficult to arouse more resonance. We concluded that, first of all, bilingual posters are very important . Secondly, posters with intersectional issues can better connect to other oppressed communities. For example, some posters mentioned standing with other oppressed communities and other actors.

According to everyone's sharing, friends who have communities mentioned (such as Tibet, Hong Kong, Iran, etc.) were very moved after seeing these cross-cutting posters. Cross-community connections are not only more conducive to others' attention and dissemination, but also help us understand that the empowerment of self and community needs to be based on understanding the multifaceted and public nature of oppression. Self-empowerment cannot just stop at speaking up for one's own rights, but needs to connect and expand one's own rights to other oppressed and marginalized communities.

2. Don’t romanticize action, embrace complexity in the process

As more and more people participated in the action, we also observed that there was a lot of romanticization and revolutionization of the action. The reality is that only a very small number of people stood up to speak out and take action, and it is extremely difficult to convey information in the world of simplified Chinese. We cannot count how many people the banner of Sitong Bridge inspired and politicized, but what is certain is that it made people who were already concerned about this issue more politicized and action-oriented. Those who paid attention to, spoke out, and participated in the poster posting action were all restless about the courage on the bridge, and were greatly shocked and wanted to do something. And in the process of doing something, we found more gaps, more difficulties, and more misunderstandings. All these difficulties and opportunities cannot bring about a complete change through a one-time poster, a one-time event, or a one-time voice. They all need long-term practice. The slogans in the posters require our daily, small, responsible and continuous attempts.

3. Make the risks concrete and try to build “nearby”

Back to fear, our "feeling" of fear is very real, but our "identification" of fear and "assessment" of risk are very abstract. Also based on the fact that most people don't know where the red line is, and the state machinery is constantly blurring this red line, we are likely to be constantly self-censoring and unintentionally or intentionally disciplining others. But such thinking is constantly disciplining and narrowing our space for action. A sharer said that before going out to participate in the activity of posting posters in the square, he was very nervous and his body would tremble. But after participating in the activity, he felt that " courage is gained in practice." Another friend responded, " Trust also grows in connection and joint action ." The friction and understanding gaps with different communities also need to be constantly discovered, communicated and built in practice.

We need to proactively transform abstract fears into specific safety assessments and strategic responses. Only in this way can we share fears and embrace each other's courage.