A year after historic protests broke out on Shanghai’s bustling Wulumuqi Road, only a subtly increased police presence on main junctions betrays anything out of the ordinary, but for many involved in what became China’s most widespread demonstrations in decades, it’s impossible to erase the memory of the events of last autumn.
In the early hours of Nov. 27 last year, vigils for victims of a fire in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, morphed into multi-city calls to end China’s “zero COVID” measures, and even in some cases topple the ruling Chinese Communist Party and President Xi Jinping (習近平).
Authorities responded by cracking down, but in early December last year they abruptly lifted the strict health restrictions that had dominated people’s lives for almost three years.
Photo: AFP
“Shortly after zero Covid lifted, everyone just got back to their normal daily life. Everyone just seems to have moved on, no one’s talking about it,” said Li, a protester in her 20s whose name has been changed for safety reasons.
For people such as Li, there is another reason for the silence: Police visited her last month and warned her not to demonstrate.
“When I think about [what happened last year] I still feel I’m suffocated by it,” Li said.
Like many, she believed harsh COVID-19 rules had hampered rescue efforts when she joined the vigil on Wulumuqi Road to grieve the 10 people killed in the fire.
Wulumuqi is the Mandarin name for the city of Urumqi.
“When I saw so many people on that street, although I was mourning, in another way I felt safe,” she said, recalling the first night of the protests.
“The atmosphere was sad, but also empowering,” she added.
Protests continued in Shanghai the next day, and ignited in other major cities, including Beijing, Guangzhou and Chengdu, with protesters holding aloft blank sheets of A4 paper to symbolize China’s lack of free speech.
“It was not surprising that protests would break out in response to the anti-COVID lockdowns,” Diana Fu, an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto, adding that “bread-and-butter issues” are common flashpoints in China.
“What was surprising was the blunt anti-regime rhetoric,” she said.
Overt political protest is rare in China, a sophisticated surveillance state that punishes dissent harshly.
Li said she had been concerned about freedom of expression before, but “thought I could live with it, because it didn’t affect my everyday life.”
COVID-19 changed everything — especially after being “trapped ... like a prisoner” in the two-month Shanghai lockdown, she said.
“People are only going to protest for their rights when it affects them. That’s why there were so many people,” she said.
Huang Yicheng, a 27-year-old who was briefly detained on Wulumuqi Road and fled to Germany, said those who wanted more had “shouldered a lot of pressure to change the policy of the country.”
“The social movement tide was very big — but we were stranded like fish on a sand beach” when people went back to normal after “zero COVID” ended, he said.
China’s security apparatus sprang into action to quash the nascent movement, from scrubbing all online mention of the protests to blanketing cities with officers.
On the second night of protests in Shanghai, Li said, police were more prepared to use force.
“They were dragging a girl into a police car — it was so violent,” she said.
Huang said he was dragged upside down along the pavement, losing his glasses and shoes. In the chaos, during which he said he saw numerous women being beaten, he managed to escape without his name being taken.
Li was called to a police station a week later, and confronted with a picture of herself at the protest. “They asked me to describe what I did and why I was there ... in a lot of detail,” she said.
William Nee (倪偉平), coordinator for research and advocacy at non-governmental organization Chinese Human Rights Defenders, said he estimated more than 100 people had been taken in or detained across the country after the protests.
He said he believed most had now been released, except for 19-year-old Uighur student Kamile Wayit.
Human Rights Watch recently called for her release, along with that of Peng Lifa (彭立發), who in October last year unfurled an anti-government banner across a Beijing bridge.
The Chinese Ministry of State Security did not respond t queries about the protests, including about those still detained.
Huang said he would not return to China until he considers it safe.
For those who have spoken out, he said: “We can never go back to normal as before.”
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