China continues to arrest youngsters who participated in the white paper protests

It is unfortunate that many of those who took part in street protests against President Xi Jinping’s ‘Zero-Covid’ policy in November 2022, in China have today gone missing. Not just is the public memory of these protests fading, but with China coming down with a heavy hand on the protestors, it is likely that the protests themselves may fade from Chinese memory.

It has been estimated that since the protests more than 100 arrests have occurred and many thousands are under the scanner for their participation in the White Paper protests, reports the BBC (18 February 2023). Thousands rallied against restrictive Covid policies across China holding up blank white sheets in the dark. It was a rare show of criticism of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) and its leader Xi Jinping.

Since then, media attention on the protests have died down and Chinese authorities have used everything in the rule book to take into detention, young professionals who were actually doing nothing more than expressing their frustration at the Chinese state which showed its incapacity to handle the Covid pandemic!

In the new year, the police in China made scores of arrests, with some estimates of more than 100 having been arrested. International rights groups and foreign universities have been calling for their release as many of the protestors had studied in the US and UK. Activist groups have even published lists with names of alleged detainees, including those who protested in Beijing as well as other cities, such as Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Nanjing.

In the report, it is mentioned that BBC has verified the names of twelve people arrested in Beijing. While five of them have been released on bail, among those still in custody are four women, Cao Zhixin, Li Siqi, Li Yuanjing and ZhaiDengrui. Cao Zhixin, in anticipation of her arrest, sent her friends a video of herself speaking to the camera. It came with the instructions to publish it online in the event of her disappearance. “What we did was express our feelings in a reasonable way,” Ms Cao said in the clip. “We don’t want to disappear… if attending a mourning event is a crime, how much room is left for sharing our feelings?

Most of the Beijing detainees were part of a loose network of friends who shared a love for the arts and often met at book clubs, movie screenings and discussions. Most of them are well-educated and include writers, journalists, a musician, a teacher, and a financial industry professional.

Reporters Without Borders notes that four of the detainees, including Li Siqiare journalists, termed their arrests as “one more chilling message to those who believe that factual information should be reported even when it contradicts the official narrative”.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the incident showed that “young people in China are paying a heavy price for daring to speak out for freedom and human rights”. HRW added that authorities had threatened lawyers and friends who have tried to support the detainees. To recall, on 27 November 2022, several women had joined a public vigil at Liangma River in Beijing. The event was one of many spontaneously held across China to mourn the victims of an apartment fire in Urumqi, which had shocked China; many believed the victims could not escape because of Covid restrictions. The vigil turned into a peaceful protest, with people holding blank sheets of paper that became a symbol of their frustration. All those who participated did not think much of the possible reaction of the Chinese state and therefore, did little to protect their identities, knowing fully well how swiftly China is known to silence protests.

Infuriated and angered by nearly three years of stringent Covid-19 policies, residents of nearly every major Chinese city held vigils commemorating the lives of those who had died, while trapped under lockdown conditions or because they were denied potentially life-saving care. Many attendees held up blank white sheets of paper to represent the lack of agency and freedom of expression they felt under the Covid pandemic rules (NPR, 11 January 2023). Since then, these demonstrations have been dubbed as “the A4 protests,” named after the A4 paper size, used internationally. The demonstrations were a powerful rebuke of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who has become closely associated with the “zero-Covid” suite of regulations aimed at keeping coronavirus infection numbers near zero.

China’s leader Xi Jinping, in meetings with European diplomats, initially dismissed the vigils, as the product of a few “frustrated student protesters.” However, subsequently, Chinese police began to track down protesters using surveillance cameras and facial recognition software and searched the phones of those arrested. It would have been relatively easy for the Ministry of Public Security to track down the protestors.

One of the detainees created a Telegram group which expanded from several members to more than sixty. Many of them used phone numbers registered under their real names. The arrests appeared to accelerate through December and January as one by one, more friends were detained. By mid-December 2022, the public narrative in China about the protests, previously unmentioned in official channels, had shifted. Nationalist bloggers online suggested (NPR, 11 January 2023), without any factual basis, that foreign interference was responsible for instigating the unrest. Some Chinese officials encouraged the speculation that foreign countries were responsible.

The problem is that the CPC thinks that any form of protest is targeted at the Party and responds with arrests and usually makes such people ‘disappear’. Observers believe authorities want to send a signal with the arrests, or what rights activists call, “killing the chicken to scare the monkeys”.The Chinese state appears to be looking for those who they believe were the main leaders and organisers. Chinese authorities’ also want to pin the blame for the protests on “Western hostile forces”.

The fact that a significant number of the detainees currently are women, and have been reportedly questioned about supporting feminist causes, also underscores China’s distrust of the women’s rights movement. The A4 protests were significant for their occurrence, but the CPC wants to erase the memory of these protests that peacefully mocked President Xi Jinping and his policies. The tragedy is that citizens of China don’t even have the right to protest and are being arrested for no fault of theirs. The world must be vigilant and protect the rights of Chinese citizens protesting peacefully.