Consider This from NPR - China's Outspoken Generation

Episode Date: December 1, 2022

The protests in China may have been silenced, for now. But could this be the start of a new political awakening among young people in the country? Host Juana Summers talks to Yangyang Cheng, a Fellow at Yale Law School's Paul Tsai China Center, and Professor Mary Gallagher, who directs the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan about why this is happening now.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. Nine campuses, one purpose. Creating tomorrow, today. More at iu.edu. China's recent wave of protests started with an apartment fire. It happened in the western region of Xinjiang. At least 10 people died in that fire. Mourners blame the government's zero-COVID lockdown policy. They said it prevented residents from getting out or rescuers from entering in time. The grief quickly turned into anger and sparked more protests around the country.

Most demonstrators demanded the end of China's zero COVID policy. But some called for Chinese leader Xi Jinping's resignation. Collectively, the protests were the biggest anti-government demonstration since 1989 and the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Chinese officials seemed caught off guard at first, but they soon cracked down and effectively shut down the unrest. For now. Consider this. The protests in China may have been silenced in the short term. But could this be the start of a new political awakening? From NPR, I'm Juana Summers other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply.

It's Consider This from NPR. Thousands of people across China broke decades of relative silence last week. Many were protesting the lockdowns that have been at the heart of China's strict zero COVID policy. A 29-year-old writer who identified himself as Yi talked to NPR from a protest in Beijing. You're hearing his words voiced by an actor for safety reasons. Yi said he was just worn out by what his daily life had become. I wake up worried if my COVID test is up to date, if my digital health code is still green, and where I can go to eat, if the restaurants are even still open. He said he brought flowers to the protest,

to mourn those who died during that deadly lockdown fire last week. It was my first time ever buying flowers, actually. I held them as a silent protest. My wish is to return to the society we had before lockdown, but that fight will be step by step. Other protesters saw a connection between the zero COVID policy and a lack of freedom in China. JC works in the film and music industry, which has been devastated by three years of COVID controls. He too spoke with NPR and is heard here through a voice actor. The lockdowns are a result of political tyranny

and a lack of checks and balances in China. I hope to be protesting in Tiananmen Square one day, directly sending a critical message to the ruling party. J.C. and Yi are part of a generation of younger Chinese who have grown up knowing only the harsh controls of the ruling Communist Party. But speaking to NPR during the protests, J.C. sounded defiant. The police cannot arrest all of us. Prisons don't have room for 1.4 billion people. So why are young Chinese speaking out now? I asked Yangyang Cheng. She grew up in China in the 1990s and is now a fellow at Yale Law School's Paul Tsai China Center. A lot of the attention over the past couple of days are to the unurban.

A lot of them are college-educated youth who demonstrated in the streets of some of the biggest cities. However, predating that, there were also the migrant workers at Foxconn factories who were having violent clashes with security forces and breaking out of their confined factories. And so when we speak about the young people, we should have an idea that demonstrations are not just about shouting slogans in an abstract form about democracy or free expression. There are also very concrete concerns. I also talked to Mary Gallagher, a political science professor and director for the Center of Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. And she said whatever

the reasons, these protests signal a change in the social contract between China's young people and its aging rulers. This younger generation, I think, has a lot of concerns, not just about the most recent lockdowns and also the fire in Xinjiang that led to the deaths of a number of people because the apartment building was barricaded and the firefighters couldn't get in. They have really considerable economic concerns. So it goes back to, I think, just a general feeling that the economy is no longer working out in the same way that it had been for the earlier generations of reform. But in this protest, we also see workers and students connecting these livelihood issues

directly to the political system and directly to Xi Jinping himself. And that's something that we really haven't seen since 1989. Do either of you have a sense as to why this is happening right now? What makes this moment different? Well, I would have to go to COVID and the really extreme policies that China has followed since 2020. People, I think, have realized that and they are really, I think, perplexed why the government hasn't done something new to move China gradually out of COVID and out of the pandemic. And I think people are really struck by this uncertainty and this lack of effectiveness from the central government, which is why you see people targeting the central government directly instead of just focusing on local officials, which is usually the case in China. We see people focus on local officials doing a bad job at implementing policy. But I think in this case, you really see people questioning the central government policy itself. And Yang Yang, what about you?

Yeah, and I think for this very specific moment, it also comes from a confluence of factors. The most immediate trigger is this fire in Wurumuchi, which claimed by official accounts 10 lives, but are likely dozens. And of course, I should also mention here that most of the victims, as far as we know from the fire, are Uyghurs. But there are very few, like the protests, even when they happen in Xinjiang, are predominantly Bataan people. So when we analyze the protests and the demonstrations at this moment, there is a class element and there is an ethno- racial element that we should keep in mind as well. As you both take stock of these protests, do either of you see the potential for this being the start of a widespread democratic movement like the one that we saw in Tiananmen Square back in 1989?

I mean, for me personally, I am very skeptical that these protests could evolve in that direction, not because there isn't a feeling from below that people are upset and that people do want change. I do think that that is the case, but I do not believe that the government will ever tolerate protests to become as large and as dynamic as they were in 1989. And we already see that, just a hugely increased police presence, checking people's phones for apps that might be banned. I think people are learning very quickly this message that these things won't be tolerated. I think, well, I wasn't born during the protests in 89 yet,

but I think I've grown a bit wary about this public imagination whenever there is some kind of widespread demonstration in China or in the Chinese territories, including Hong Kong. The immediate analogy is Tiananmen. However, for up to a million people to gather in the nation's capital, it requires a certain degree of freedom in society. And at that time, a lot of that was predicated on fractions within the top leadership of the Chinese Communist Party that some were rather more liberal and sympathetic to the protesters, which included both students and workers. And now what we've seen is that Xi Jinping has consolidated power really to an unprecedented level for the past few decades. And so that condition is not there.

And there are also, of course, a lot of other conditions with regards to the high tech surveillance state, etc. To either of you, what do you think it is that has emboldened young people of this generation in China to speak out in a way that we have not seen from some other generations. These are students and workers who did not experience the 1980s. They did not experience a China that was closed. They experienced only successful, integrated, global China. And up until the reign of Xi Jinping, when he took over in 2012, 2013, there were really very few political constraints on them in the sense that as long as they didn't oppose the government, they had widespread social and economic freedom, as well as cultural freedom in terms of how they consumed social media.

And it's only the recent years that we've seen this really diminish and close down. So I agree with Yang Yang. These protests, they come out and are sparked by zero COVID, but they go, I think, more directly to a feeling that the youth have that China is no longer opening, that China is closing, and that they are, you know, the generation that's going to have to go through this. And it's really, the idea of a political awakening is really right. I had a student yesterday say to me that until she saw these protests, she had never heard the general secretary of the party be condemned. She had never heard that in her life. Even though authorities appeared to be surprised by these protests,

they also seem to have shut them down relatively quickly. Younger people may be more outspoken now, but the ruling class that they are speaking out against seems intent on silencing dissent by any means necessary. Professor Gallagher, do you believe these young protesters will be content with what they're told now? Well, I think I agree that the repressive apparatus that's been deployed on Chinese city streets in the last couple of days is impressive and is certainly probably making students and workers think twice about coming out on the street immediately. But I do think that there's a longer term process that has something to do with new ways in which to protest, new ways in which to communicate grievances. And also, the government's very seemingly, even just today, very quick dropping of zero COVID in some major Chinese cities like Guangzhou may also show them that their protests were successful. about earlier in this conversation to see this as a political awakening for the younger generation.

And these newly iterated ideas, right, like Professor Gallagher said, is the same for one of her students. It is the same for me as well. This is the first time I've heard the Chinese language being used in a public setting in such a radical fashion in some of these protest slogans. And that by itself is an exercise of agency and is a manifestation of power that shows potential and possibilities. That was Young-Young Chung, a fellow at Yale Law School's Paul Tsai China Center. We also heard from Professor Mary Gallagher, who directs the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. Earlier in the episode, we heard reporting from NPR's Emily Fang. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Juana Summers.

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