Why is the blank paper protest the "three movements"? Understanding the Revolutionary and Limitations of Lockdown Protests

This is a long article reflecting on the White Paper Movement at the end of 2022. The abbreviated version was published by the reporter, entitled " Three Forces Gathered in the White Paper Protest: Understanding the Limitations and Revolutionary Nature of the 2022 Social Movement in China ". Because the abbreviated version deletes the background analysis of the entire blockage protests, authorized by the author Zuo Yue, so I share the original text here for readers to discuss.

As governments around the world began to quietly summon/detain the White Paper Movement protesters on a large scale, it is undeniable that the "White Paper Movement" inspired by the three-year strict ban has quickly come to an end. This wave of protests, known as the unique one after the "89th", spontaneously and quickly linked across regions among workers, citizens and students in a short period of time, and politicized slogans even gained a certain degree of popularity among cross-class groups. accept. This wave of movement is undoubtedly revolutionary in the current Chinese society, or it is a direct presentation of the qualitative changes that have accumulated over a long period of time in the past, completely refreshing our imagination of domestic group resistance.

Even though it seems that under the general trend of unblocking, the demands of the people have been met to a certain extent (although they have fallen into another kind of "chaos" where the government is extremely flat), but this does not mean that the political accumulation of this wave of protests will be as strong as possible. Once again, the group movements of the past vanished into thin air. But why did this wave of protests fade away so quickly in such a short period of time? In addition to the normal dilemma of political suppression, how should we understand and reflect on the revolution and limitations of this movement wave? As an activist who has been engaged in the work of NGOs and grassroots organizations in China for a long time, I try to dismantle the three "parallel" movements that emerged in the white paper protest wave, clarify the interaction and tension between each other, and provide some practical reflections on the movements.

1. Why did the blockade protests happen?

Even though the blank paper protest was triggered by the tragedy of the fire in Urumqi, Xinjiang, but if we look back at the essence of this movement, we cannot ignore the systemic humanitarian disaster and political and economic crisis caused by the three-year "zero policy". As netizens commented, the "zero-clear policy" has almost become the "basic national policy" of the new era. The people's economic, living, medical, cultural, psychological and other livelihood needs have no room for negotiation, and they are forced to give in to this political task. . Due to the extremely high spread and difficulty of control of the new crown variant omicron, in the first half of 2022 alone, more than 400 million people across the country are in a state of stagnation, especially in border areas such as Shanghai and Xinjiang, Tibet, and Yunnan. . The secondary disasters, economic and people's livelihood and political crisis derived from the blockade have become the most core motivating factors in this wave of protests.

The secondary disaster of the epidemic under the blockade. At least 10 people (all Uyghurs) were killed in the Jixiangyuan fire in Urumqi, Xinjiang on November 24 due to the lockdown measures, and the official accusation of the victims at the press conference that night—“Some residents are weak in self-defense and self-rescue”— It is the last fire that ignites the anger of the masses. But in fact, this fire has never stopped since the closure of Wuhan. After the closure of Nanjing, Yangzhou and other places in 2021, and the closure of Shanghai in 2022, residents who committed suicide in despair did not care about it, and there were countless sudden outbreaks. The tragedy of dying from a disease without any timely treatment; 2022 will be a year of collective trauma across the country: On September 18, a transfer bus in Guizhou overturned and 27 people were killed; Prevention and control were hindered and rescue was delayed. On November 11, Shenzhen University was closed for a month without reasonable accommodation, causing a female logistics worker to commit suicide by jumping off the building. On the 21st, a factory fire in Anyang, Hunan Province killed 38 people (mostly female workers)... We can hardly fully record every humanitarian tragedy that happened under the lockdown, because similar tragedies happen one after another every day in various places - this is the common cause of all people Everyone has experienced the trauma of the epidemic. As written on a protest cardboard carried by a male student at Northwest University of Political Science and Law, "I am the one who overturned the bus, I was the one who was sick and refused a doctor, I was the one who collapsed and jumped off the building, and I was the one who was trapped in the fire. If these are not me, then the next it is me".

The economic and people's livelihood crisis under the blockade. From the official point of view, the three-year lockdown seems to have reduced the interruption of the new crown to economic life, but this is obviously not the case. During the whole year of 2022, there will be a large number of unemployment, layoffs, financial disputes and other events, and even the overall weakness of consumption power , all indicate that the crisis of people's livelihood is rapidly accumulating. On the one hand, the government’s rescue plan during the epidemic mainly focused on providing social security subsidies and tax cuts for enterprises, while workers hardly enjoyed any economic support from the government and relied entirely on self-reliance ^[1] ; on the other hand, long-term random The sudden and sudden blockade and control measures have made the income of workers in the service industry and manufacturing industry extremely unstable, the number of unemployed has increased sharply, and some workers have joined the ranks of informal employment, such as the take-out industry ^[2] , but the long-term interval Lockdown and capital's ever-evolving algorithmic exploitation did not allow workers to obtain a stable economic income. Unfortunately, it is difficult for us to obtain the most real unemployment data, but the two public data in 2022 are enough to glimpse the urgency of the situation of the people under the lockdown. One is that the unemployment rate/ratio of unemployment among young people and educated groups has skyrocketed. Official data from the government in July 2022 showed that the unemployment rate of urban youth aged 16-24 was 19.9%; data from private business reports also showed that as of April 2022, the rate of fulfillment of destinations for fresh college graduates across the country was only 23.61%. The other is that the national GDP growth target is out of reach. The government originally set a national GDP growth target of 5.5% for the whole year, but in fact the growth rate in the first three quarters was only 3% , and the current outbreak of the epidemic in the fourth quarter also made it impossible for GDP growth to be realized. Unemployment of a large number of workers or interruption of income is an inevitable economic price under the closed politics.

Therefore, before the wave of white paper protests on November 26-27, throughout November and even in the past six months, urban villages or communities with floating populations all over the country have sporadically erupted against the blockade and the spontaneous demolition of fences. Protests driven by "livelihood demands", especially represented by hundreds of thousands of migrant workers in Kangle Village, Haizhu District, Guangzhou on November 14 ^[3] and tens of thousands of Foxconn workers in Zhengzhou on November 22/23. . This struggle in the Pau community continued even after the White Paper movement was suppressed.

Widespread anti-epidemic fatigue and increased government mistrust. A crisis of legitimacy in China's social governance was clearly brewing before the epidemic. In recent years, the weak economic development and the slack of upward mobility have made both blue-collar and white-collar workers feel a sense of urgency to survive. From social animals to internal scrolling, from laying flat to "moisturizing" learning, and even to the "last generation", this represents the passive resistance of the new generation of young people to the serious unfair distribution of capitalism; the progressive sense of despair can be derived from these It is really felt in the cultural vocabulary of "new invention". All kinds of social crisis incidents do not receive official positive responses, but are suppressed in a way of refusing dialogue and stigmatization on the grounds of "foreign forces". The people are increasingly aware of the authoritarian nature of public power, such as the Chengdu 49 case , Xianzi "Anti-Sexual Harassment Case", Feng County "Iron Chain Girl" and Wuyi Incident, Tangshan Beating Incident, etc. are all like this.

Furthermore, the politicized awakening of ordinary people’s consciousness began with the 2018 constitutional amendment that abolished the "term limit for the chairman". Finally, on the eve of this year's "20th National Congress", it was ignited by Peng Lifa (net name Peng Zaizhou) at Sitong Bridge in Beijing. Although this solitary protest was fleeting in cyberspace, and Peng Lifa was subsequently completely disappeared from the world, it was not until his phrase "No nucleic acid, freedom" ^[4] was widely shouted in the white paper protest that we became aware of the civil disobedience. A sense of political resistance has quietly formed. This new picture of civil political resistance has already been paved before the epidemic, and the secondary damage and economic and livelihood crisis caused by the inhumane blockade measures only further exacerbated the public's distrust of the entire system. In addition, after the "Twentieth National Congress", the blockade not only failed to be loosened as expected, but was increased at all levels, and people's expectations for unblocking were frustrated; This created more conflicts and confusion between local and central policies, which directly laid an important policy foreshadowing for the follow-up anti-blockade wave.

2. Why are these "three movements"?

After the fire accident in Urumqi on November 24, large-scale anti-blockade demonstrations and protests were triggered in the local area the next day. The grief and indignation caused by the fire quickly spread throughout the Internet. Then, on the afternoon of November 26th, the Nanjing Institute of Communication and the evening protest on the Urumqi Middle Road in Shanghai held white papers, which directly started a wave of white paper protests across the country and even around the world. Within two days of the short weekend, more than 200 university students across the country protested on campus, and citizens in more than a dozen major cities took to the streets to protest. Afterwards, hundreds of cities around the world had thousands of protests by dispersed Chinese communities in response to domestic struggle.

This wave of protests symbolized by "white paper", from "resisting the blockade" to putting forward more radical political demands, seems to be a coherent, cross-regional and cross-field nationwide political movement. But in essence, there are three “parallel” movements—the struggle of the working class, the struggle of urban residents and educated intellectuals/university students, and the solidarity movement of the new generation of Chinese diaspora overseas. I dismantled these three movements from the lockdown protests, not to emphasize the independence of the three, but to highlight the integration of these three movements in the lockdown protests; and the parallelism of the three movements The tension between coexistence helps us understand the complexity and limitations of this wave of protest.

When "blank paper" was widely cited as a symbol of the overall movement at home and abroad, the core of the discussion of the whole movement basically focused only on the political protests of domestic universities and urban residents and the solidarity movement of the dispersed Chinese communities overseas. One narrative completely ignores worker struggles in urban villages and migrant worker communities everywhere. Why should the role of the working class’s struggle in this wave of white paper be taken seriously? We cannot ignore the inspiration of Foxconn workers’ struggle experience for the entire follow-up white paper movement. At the end of October, the out-of-control epidemic at Foxconn in Zhengzhou led to a "mass escape" by workers over the iron fence of the factory wall. At the end of November, tens of thousands of Foxconn workers protested again due to violation of the contract reward promise, and directly confronted the management and a large number of riot police. These two Foxconn workers' protests are different from the long-term lack of visibility of workers' rights protection ^[5] . A large number of conflicting videos/pictures are spread on various platforms with the help of Douyin and Kuaishou. Exploitative worker activism resonates almost universally—corruption, chaos, inhuman conditions are collective experiences.

To a certain extent, the direct actions of Foxconn workers provided an important source of protest action for the follow-up wave of white paper street protests —crying on the Internet is no longer heard, and the streets are the home of voices. In fact, the anti-blockade struggles of such worker groups in cities will run through almost the entire year of 2022. According to incomplete statistics from Yiyan.com , before the white paper movement, there have been nearly 80 anti-blockade protests since June this year, most of which took place in urban villages/worker communities. Workers are the most sensitive group under the epidemic control. The invisible virus and the tangible livelihood crisis are forcing their resistance. This is why this wave of worker protests continues in various places even after the White Paper Movement was suppressed ^[6] .

The fire in Xinjiang is undoubtedly the "last straw" that triggered the threshold of mass anger, and the "mourning" urban street and university protests with urban residents and educated intellectuals/college students as the main participants were thus unveiled. This wave of simultaneous and spontaneous protests in various places is actually a systematic presentation of the entire political issue of containment: the emotional accumulation of secondary injuries and collective trauma caused by the epidemic, the political and economic structural dilemma caused by the crisis of livelihood under the containment, the reaction of the worker community The action gap provided by the blockade and control protests, the failure of the public’s anti-epidemic policy expectations and policy tensions after the “Twentieth National Congress”, and the politicized discourse resources provided by the Sitongqiao’s lone protest, all these have jointly become this wave of urban/university movements important mobilization resources. It is against this background that the solidarity movement of the new generation of overseas Chinese communities has entered a new stage. Over the past few years, the new generation of overseas diaspora Chinese communities, mainly composed of overseas students, have undergone radical political changes. In 2018, the constitutional revision of the term of office triggered a small-scale #NotMyPresident campus poster movement in overseas colleges and universities. The protest against Peng Lifa’s Sitong Bridge on the eve of this year’s “20th National Congress” inspired a new campus poster movement. Universities can be seen everywhere, and they are very large. Subsequently, the white paper movement broke out in major cities in China, and the new generation of Chinese diaspora groups were directly mobilized on a large scale, spontaneously organizing and participating in local offline protests. The scale and form of this kind of overseas solidarity action has never been seen in the past 30 years (post-1989).

In this wave of protests, although the overseas solidarity movement and the domestic white paper protests are a whole that echoes each other, the different movement subjects and agenda settings between the two, as well as the tension in political demands, inevitably determine their success in China. The different roles that will be played in the opposition movement. This is also the reason for distinguishing the relationship between the two in this paper. We also further differentiated the movement of local lockdown protests into workers and urban residents/students. This is not to separate the relationship between the two, but to remind the movement participants not to ignore the long-standing labor community . Movement resources and awareness inspiration for civil disobedience movements in China - social inequality rooted in the economic system has always been one of the core drivers of any political movement - while also highlighting its resilient qualities and the need to unite the labor movement (described below). In this wave of blockade protests, the two are not naturally separated in time and space. From the afternoon to the evening of November 27, tens of thousands of people (including migrant workers and residents) in various districts of Wuhan demolished The fight over the fence is an important example.

3. The revolutionary nature of the blockade protests

Now, with the government's "laying down" style of sudden release, the entire wave of closed protests is coming to an end, and the authorities have also begun to settle accounts against the demonstrators as usual. The short-lived upsurge of the movement and the absence of any structural political change, I don't see the need to elevate the movement to "revolutionary" status, although such discourse helps spread across the international community. However, the revolutionary, or progressive nature of this wave of lockdown protests still needs to be discussed in depth.

The long tradition of radical resistance among Chinese workers needs no further elaboration here. From the wave of collective rights defense of tens of thousands of workers accompanied by the layoffs of state-owned enterprise workers in the 1990s, to the various wildcat strikes erupted by migrant workers fighting for their legal rights under the market economy since the beginning of this century (especially around 2010), the closure of Factory gates, taking to the streets, and blocking highways are all normal paradigms for workers to defend their rights. The marginality of the workers' groups and the government's high sensitivity to the labor movement and its high-intensity maintenance of stability have kept workers' radical protests unknown to the public for a long time. However, the repercussions of the Foxconn workers' rebellion in Chinese society this time, The movement resources it provided for this white paper protest once again revealed that the future Chinese opposition movement must regard the labor movement as an important core part.

Movements with urban residents/students as the main body did not exist after "89", but the trend of politicization collectively presented in this wave of blockade protests is a completely new movement picture. Most of the previous urban protests were collective actions focused on specific issues, such as the anti-PX environmental protection demonstrations by citizens in Xiamen in 2007 and Maoming, Guangdong in 2014, the collective rights protection of parents calling for "fair education" in Shenzhen and Kunshan, Jiangsu in 2016, or the 2010 Cultural preservation protests for "supporting Cantonese" in Guangzhou in 2010, or small-scale protests that lacked influence led by scattered pro-democracy activists/rights defenders. In this white paper protest, the majority of the people’s direct appeals in name still revolve around opposition to strict restrictions, but there are political slogans mixed in the crowd-"Xi Jinping step down", "freedom of the press", "freedom of speech" Etc - Start being embraced and shouted together by the crowd at the protests.

The "Sitongqiao Protest" may be the key "fire" that gave birth to this series of political slogans, but it is by no means the source of this qualitative change in politics. In the past few years (dating back to before the epidemic), we have clearly observed in cyberspace that the middle-class or educated groups are increasingly desperate for wealth accumulation and upward mobility, from the consciousness of social animals, "laying flat" to "moistening" The span has gradually revealed that the people are highly disappointed with the current political and economic system, and even the government has to use the state propaganda machine to refute the anti-capital culture of "laying flat" and "moistening" and other "dross". In the past, these "losses" of life were not really transformed into actual resistance actions, but this time the blank protest in the city confirmed this revolutionary political qualitative change to a certain extent. At present, we may not be able to predict how the future Chinese mass sports will be organized and developed, but at least this white paper movement has opened up a new politicized imagination of folk movements, completely subverting the previous urban protests that used isolated depoliticized issues as their appeal or A mobilization model centered on human rights defenders .

This wave of solidarity actions by hundreds of cities/universities around the world in response to domestic white paper protests has broken through the political party-style mobilization and government lobbying/initiative protest paradigm of the traditional democracy movement since the "89" since the "89" period. Diasporas of the subject are forming a new politics of resistance. The traditional Chinese overseas democracy movement has been criticized in the past. This kind of political initiative with overseas pro-democracy leaders as the main body and emphasizing direct political opposition poses a strong patriarchal and conservative tendency. It is completely unable to gather and organize a wide range of overseas Chinese communities, and it is even more difficult to connect domestically. Social issues and cross-class communities, and even the new generation of diaspora communities take the initiative to stay away. But this time the overseas solidarity in response to the white paper protest was mostly set by the new generation of diaspora as the core organizers for agenda setting and social mobilization, focusing on linkage and support with domestic movements, and actively engaged in dialogue with different overseas citizen groups To amplify the influence and progress of the solidarity movement.

In addition, during the solidarity movements in many regions (such as New York, London, Toronto, Vancouver, etc.), not only did a large number of slogans or demonstration boards cover domestic women, sexual minorities, labor, Xinjiang and other diverse issues appear in the on-site protests, On the one hand, it has also strengthened respect and attention to diverse groups/issues, which is especially reflected in the special attention to the issue of concentration camps in Xinjiang. After the white paper protests broke out in various places, the overseas Chinese student community based on the protests in many places in China sorted out relatively moderate "four demands" that can make the domestic movement more focused── (1) Allow public mourning ( 2) End the zero-clearing policy (3) Release human rights defenders (4) Protect civil rights - these moderate demands hope to gain more safety space for domestic protesters, so there is no strong politicization tendency, which also shows that this The Polish Overseas Solidarity Movement has a domestic movement-centric orientation. However, with more discussions among overseas Chinese communities and mutual education among communities on Xinjiang issues, as the starting point of the movement, the experience and voice of the Uyghurs, who were the heaviest victims of the Urumqi fire, also began to be emphasized at the rally, so overseas Protesters have also proposed to add a fifth demand: "stop racial persecution" or "close Xinjiang concentration camps" .

This series of progressive new practices may not represent the overall picture of the overseas solidarity movement for the time being, but this progressive mobilization and initiative linked to domestic issues is clearly reshaping a new resistance politics of overseas diaspora communities .

4. Limitations of the protest movement

Going back to the core issue to be dealt with in this article, how should we understand and respond to the limitations of this wave of blockade protests, and how should we view the rapid fading of this wave of movements? This is why we understand this wave of protests as three movements: even though it was a cross-class and cross-regional movement with a common appeal at the beginning—anti-seal, but since the movement occurred, its subsequent development Mobilization and mobilization are three completely different modes, and this is precisely the dilemma of the movement to block and control the protests.

The urban residents/student movement based on city squares or colleges and universities has basically no connection with the resistance of the worker community in the subsequent development. This is not to deny the former the value of politicization or radicalization in the movement, but this disconnect highlights the complete lack of effective cross-class and cross-group infrastructure in the entire civil movement in China .

This wave of blockade protests has indeed demonstrated the revolutionary side of the Chinese people's new resistance movement, but the long-standing fragmentation and isolation of civil society as a whole has not seen a substantive solution in this movement. Since 2013, civil society and NGO groups have been hit hard twice, most civil networks have collapsed, and the entire stability maintenance system has been continuously improved and strengthened. Even though the current social crisis is constantly accumulating, the infrastructure for interactive dialogue and political mobilization between groups does not exist. In independent local struggles, different communities may still be able to absorb movement resources from each other; however, if there is a lack of dialogue and synergistic linkage mechanisms across groups, and even within the community—especially the urban educated group and the working class If there is no linkage between them, they will not be able to respond to each other and intervene in political dialogue as a sustainable organizational force. In the face of the authorities' use of mature and highly targeted stability maintenance machinery to suppress, the entire wave of movements is not happy to see that they can How long will it last.

The lack of political infrastructure and civic internet connectivity is not an issue unique to this wave of protests. However, if we hope to continue the new political landscape opened up by this wave of protests in the future, all actors must seriously face and reflect on the plight of civil society infrastructure, and try to establish cross-class dialogue and collaborative networks locally. Open up new solidarity practices overseas—otherwise China will never lack "protests", but it is difficult for society to condense opportunities for "movements" that can change the times. Therefore, the issue of civil infrastructure construction—how to establish a community network and a cross-class dialogue/coordination system in the local civil society that is no longer dominated by NGOs (which have been severely suppressed and restricted) must be discussed in the future political key considerations in the campaign.

In the discussion of this article, we emphasize the importance of worker group mobilization, not out of moral or strategic wishful thinking, but from the history of radical resistance of Chinese migrant workers and the problems of the capitalist system of unfair social distribution reflected behind it. We can see that without paying attention to people's livelihood issues and mobilizing and uniting the working class, it is difficult for any Chinese resistance movement to resist the increasingly strengthening stability maintenance system and nationalist hegemony consciousness, and form an effective movement accumulation.

In addition, supporting and strengthening the organizational work of the new generation of diasporic communities will also be at the core of future overseas solidarity movements. Although this overseas solidarity movement has jumped out of the traditional mobilization and advocacy model of the democracy movement and opened up some new progressive explorations, the dilemma still exists- the current new generation of diaspora communities, mainly foreign students, lack experience in living in China There is a certain political tension between the overseas movement paradigm and discourse framework and the domestic movement situation. How the new generation of overseas diaspora groups define their position relative to domestic protests remains an unsolved problem. This is one of the core reasons why the overseas pro-democracy movements of the 1989 and 1990s are drifting away from domestic movements. Especially in the current international environment where Western powers as a whole are opposed to China, how to reduce political dependence on political parties in other countries and avoid top-down advocacy models, while fully empowering Chinese communities at home and abroad at the grassroots level, is an important issue. Obviously, it is the core dilemma facing the new generation of overseas diaspora communities.

At present, it is really difficult for us to determine how a truly effective overseas solidarity movement should develop, but this wave of protests has at least raised another new question: how should overseas diaspora communities build a new generation of Chinese progressive activists in the future? The main body, a solidarity movement with China's local issues as the core of the initiative, linking domestic movements and connecting overseas civil society groups as the focus?

Zuo Yue (2022.12.23)

note

^[1] The consumption voucher policy launched by individual cities has hardly improved the situation of workers. The amount of consumer coupons is small, consumption-oriented and needs to meet certain thresholds.

^[2] Taking Meituan as an example, according to Meituan’s financial report, by the end of 2019, the total number of registered riders of Meituan was 3.98 million, and by the end of 2020, the number of riders who earned income through Meituan reached 9.5 million.

^[3] As a matter of fact, the protests against the blockade of the “Chongka” in Kangle Village and other places have occurred sporadically since November 5th, and reached a climax on the evening of November 14th, when hundreds of thousands of migrant workers rushed out The closed area took to the streets to protest, broke through the cordon, collectively took to the streets to protest the control measures, and overturned the police cars.

^[4] Peng Lifa’s complete slogan is “Don’t have nucleic acid, eat, don’t block and prosecute, get freedom, don’t lie, get dignity, don’t have Cultural Revolution, get reform, don’t want leaders, get votes, don’t be slaves, be citizens.” During actual protests, some areas were Shouting the complete slogan, there is also an abbreviation based on its slogan paradigm, "Don't lie down, be free"; different cities have also innovated, such as Guangzhou's slogan "Don't watch, join, don't lie down, go to work, don't lie down, go to school" and so on.

^[5] Chinese workers' rights defense and strikes have existed for a long time, but due to political censorship and official suppression, as well as the lack of visibility of workers' issues themselves, these protests have long been invisible, although they are not many in number. There have been sporadic and spontaneous worker protests in almost every city or industrial area across the country for a long time.

^[6] After the white paper protests in Haizhu Square in Guangzhou disappeared, after November 28, in many urban villages in Haizhu District, such as Lijiao Village, Houjiao Village, and other urban villages, collective workers’ anti-blockade and control continued to appear. The protest even overturned the police, who fired tear gas and some protesting workers were arrested.