China’s Internet censors yesterday removed virtually all references to reports of a rare protest in Beijing that involved banners denouncing Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and the country’s COVID-19 policies.
Beijing is on high alert against any disruption to a landmark Chinese Communist Party (CCP) meeting that is scheduled to begin tomorrow, at which Xi is expected to secure a historic third term.
Incoming parcels and subway commuters have been subjected to additional security checks, and armies of volunteers have been deployed in every neighborhood to report anything out of the ordinary.
Photo: screenshot from Fang Zhouzi’s Twitter account
However, video footage and pictures that spread online on Thursday appeared to show a defiant protester draping two hand-painted banners with slogans criticizing the CCP’s policies on the side of a bridge in Beijing.
“We want food, not PCR tests. We want freedom, not lockdowns. We want respect, not lies. We want reform, not a Cultural Revolution. We want a vote, not a leader. We want to be citizens, not slaves,” one banner read.
The other banner called on people to go on strike and remove “the traitorous dictator Xi Jinping.”
Other images showed a person in a hard hat standing on the bridge behind the banners, as well as smoke rising from a fire on the bridge and police rushing to remove the banners.
There was no sign of the banners or their writer when Agence France-Presse journalists arrived at the scene of the reported protest. There appeared to be an elevated police presence near the site, but residents said they had not seen the banners being unfolded.
Public protests are extremely rare in the Chinese capital, and those who defy Beijing’s strict security apparatus face serious punishment.
By yesterday morning, Chinese social media censors had blocked posts and keywords related to the protest, including “Sitong Bridge,” the name of the overpass where the slogans appeared to have been displayed.
Search results for the keyword “Beijing” on Sina Weibo were restricted to just verified accounts, instead of the usual torrent of regular users’ posts about the capital.
On Twitter some users said their accounts had been temporarily disabled on another major Chinese platform, WeChat, after they shared photos of the protest.
However, such a rare protest at a time of extreme political sensitivity caught attention. Yesterday morning a hashtag “I saw it,” in which people referenced the incident without referring to it, had been viewed more than 180,000 times before it was deleted.
A reply asking what the hashtag referred to was answered by a user saying “go search on Twitter, sister, if you search for a certain capital, you can find everything.”
Other commenters referenced the Les Miserables song Do You Hear the People Sing?, which was briefly censored in 2019 after it became a popular protest song in Hong Kong.
Many comments alluded to a revolutionary saying made famous by Mao Zedong (毛澤東): “A tiny spark can set the prairie ablaze.”
Some Internet users claimed to have identified the protester, including the Chinese dissident and former CCP insider Cai Xia (蔡霞), who posted screenshots on her Twitter account purporting to be days-old deleted Twitter postings from the protester.
Fang Shimin (方是民), a US-based Chinese science writer better known by his pen name Fang Zhouzi (方舟子), said the same slogans displayed on the bridge had days earlier been posted to his ResearchGate account by the man believed to be the protester.
US Senator Todd Young on Thursday praised the protesters in a statement on Twitter.
“Inspiring courage by some Chinese citizens speaking truth to power in the heart of Beijing. They will undoubtedly be punished by the authorities but I pray their acts will encourage more Chinese citizens to fight for a better future than the one imposed on them by the CCP,” he wrote.
Additional reporting by Helen Davidson and staff writer
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