Banners with slogans criticizing Chinese Communist Party Secretary General Xi Jinping were posted on an overpass in Beijing last week, and similar criticism spread to other cities in the country and overseas. References to Beijing events continue to be severely limited in mainland China.
The protest banners, disseminated in photos and videos on social media, criticized the strict lockdowns and restrictive measures that are pillars of the “zero-crown” policy to thoroughly crack down on the new coronavirus, and even called elections. .
According to VoiceofCN, an anonymous Chinese group that runs a pro-democracy Instagram account with over 30,000 followers, the slogans have been secretly used in at least seven cities, including Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong. They also collected references to the same phrase and found the set of expressions in more than 200 universities in the United States, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and elsewhere.
Xi’s Unusual Criticism of Peking Citizens’ Dissatisfaction Explodes Before Communist Party Congress
Protest graffiti found at the China Film Museum in Beijing
Source: Citizendailycn / Instagram
Launched in March 2020CN entryOne administrator said he received about 20 reports of critical slogans from mainland China, most of them written in bathrooms or posted on school bulletin boards.
“Most of us work and study outside mainland China, but we all grew up in China,” the administrator said in a message to Bloomberg. I see it as a way to express the anger that has been repressed for too long by governments and the censorship machine. “
Protest slogans at the north gate of Xi’an Jiaotong University
Source: Citizendailycn / Instagram
Individual protests also stand out, as openly opposing Mr. Xi in China could lead to lengthy prison sentences. References to last week’s Beijing flyover protests continue to be the subject of heavy internet censorship in China, and even vague terms like “bridge”, “guts” and “Beijing” are limited.
Activists are speculating on the identity of the person who raised a banner criticizing Mr. Xi in Beijing. Many believe that the person is a 48-year-old man from Beijing who has published several articles under the pseudonym “Peng Caizhou”. Bloomberg News was unable to independently confirm the man’s identity.
Graffiti containing “8964” marking the Tiananmen Square massacre found in a bathroom in Chengdu, Sichuan province
Source: Citizendailycn / Instagram
Perry Link, a professor at the University of California, Riverside, said that although only one person protested in Beijing, Mr. Xi’s latest criticism of the coronavirus restrictions could be a symbol of widespread discontent in China.
“Mao Zedong said that even a small spark can burn open fields, and this could be the case with the situation I am witnessing now,” he said. “This is a single spark that has the potential to burn open fields,” he said.
news-rsf-original-reference paywall">Original title:Anti-Xi slogans in the rare Beijing protest spread to China(extract)
