The History of China - China Lockdown Update - 11/27/22: The Winter of Our Discontent

Episode Date: November 27, 2022

Protests erupt across Chinese cities in perhaps the largest demonstration of public outcry in more than 30 years. Today, we look at some of the major reasons why. [WARNING: Disturbing Content - audio clips of deadly fire, protests, clashes with police] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. History isn't black and white, yet too often it's presented as such. Grey History, The French Revolution is a long-form history podcast dedicated to exploring the ambiguities and nuances of the past. From a revolution of hope and liberty to the infamous Reign of terror. You can't understand the modern world without understanding the French Revolution. So search for the French Revolution today. China lockdown update. November 27th, 2022. The winter of our discontent. How did you go bankrupt? Bill asked. Two ways, Mike said, gradually and then suddenly.

From The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. It's impossible for me to sit here now on this Sunday morning and know what any of this may be leading toward or headed for or what it ultimately will mean, if anything. I'm no prognosticator, and I've got no crystal ball. All I can really say is that this is the angriest that I've seen China in my whole long tenure here, and what must certainly be the first instance of widespread, multi-city protests directed, at whole or in part, at the central government's action and inaction happening in public since probably 1989. All over the country, from Zhengzhou to Guangzhou, Nanjing, Beijing, Shanghai, all the way out west to, of all places, Urumqi, people have been taking to the streets to demonstrate, sometimes using physical force,

their displeasure with the state of things in China today. Why are these people so angry? Well, there are at least three major throughlines of this wide and spreading public airing of grievance. One, labor disputes company policy and police strike breaking and excessive use of force at the Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou. Two, the tragic, terrible, deadly fire in Urumqi and the government's failure to contain the blaze and then attempt to squelch public outcry. But unsurprisingly, the common thread through all this is three, the unrelenting and indeed expanding and tightening COVID-0 policy and the terrible cost it continues to stochastically inflict upon individuals, businesses, and the very concept of normality. So let's take a look at each of these in turn. First, Zhengzhou, the capital city of central China's Henan province. It's home to the world's largest Foxconn factory,

the company behind making many of the components necessary to make products such as the iPhone. Though the company's questionable labor policies have put it in hot water for some time, things began getting out of hand this time around when, following a local outbreak of COVID, the factory was locked down to the outside world, with workers still inside. Some of these workers, understandably, tried to flee the premises, and many of them were caught and brought back. Complaints emerged of unsafe working conditions, in which COVID-positive employees were being housed

and working alongside uninfected co-workers, which the company has flatly denied. Further complaints, which turned into loud and then violent demonstrations, were and continue to be voiced about the company failing to meet promised compensation packages for workers. When groups of white-clad police attempted to hem the protesters in and block them off, the protesters turned violent, with barricades being torn down and then hurled as makeshift weapons at the Dabai police behind their blockades. What does that mean in the scope of wider China, though? How is this more than just a local business dispute? It serves as a reflection of the fraying relationship between many companies and their workers. The so-called

996 mentality pushed by many companies across their workers. The so-called 996 mentality pushed by many companies across China, which encourages and even expects their employees to work up to 12-hour shifts six days a week, have run squarely into the face of the stringent COVID policies that make life and even going to work itself increasingly difficult. People, myself included, have been and can commiserate with the idea of being locked in at work, even if only for a short time, and it is a maddening feeling. The raw deal and broken company promises of fair recompensation have touched on a particularly in Urumqi, the capital city of the ever-controversy-ridden Xinjiang province, a major fire broke out on the 15th floor of an apartment complex. Since the apartment was under strict COVID lockdown, as has been the entire

province for now more than 110 days, even as daily confirmed infections have hovered around 100 in a province with a population of nearly 26 million, which is one of the region's most transparently obvious overreaches of COVID authority to justify its draconian measures over the region. The residents of the facility were not permitted out. In short order, this led to responding fire trucks to be unable to reach the grounds via the narrow entrance street, which had parked cars making it too narrow for them to pass through. The owners of the cars were, that's right, under lockdown, and thus unable to come out and move them. As such, video was released of the fire trucks trying to spray water at the burning building,

but them being so far away that even their powerful water jets could not reach the blaze. In what just might be one of the single most casually cruel remarks I've ever heard, Urumqi City Mayor Li Wenzheng remarked at a Friday evening news conference, alongside denials that COVID-0 policy had anything to do with the lack of effective city response, a full-throated throwing of blame upon the victims themselves. He said, quote, some residents' ability to rescue themselves was too weak, and they failed to escape, end quote. A true portrait of bravery, that's Li Wenzheng. Heartrending videos of the fire were circulated around Chinese media faster than the censors could take them down, showing multiple angles of the fire, the screams from

inside, as well as audio capture of a final set of audio messages and WeChat calls in which a woman from the 16th floor of the burning complex, audibly struggling to breathe, said that her children were dying and that she was too oxygen-deprived to move anymore. It is common knowledge that, all across China, buildings' supposed emergency exits are commonly sealed shut, sometimes with rebar, sometimes with locked chains. Moreover, it has likewise become a horribly common policy to physically seal residents inside their own buildings and even apartments if they are under lockdown, using physical means such as steel fencing, welded rebar, andicky, myopic local governments, but only a matter of when and how bad would it be. In this instance, it senseless took to the streets in large numbers,

followed very suddenly by the provincial government announcing that, miraculously, the COVID state of emergency was suddenly over for the first time since August, and all while cases all around the rest of the country continue to rise, and that it would reopen quote-unquote in stages, though it certainly remains to be seen whether that comes to anything. As of this recording, protests are still ongoing across the capital city. in stages, though it certainly remains to be seen whether that comes to anything. As of this recording, protests are still ongoing across the capital city. Protests across many other parts of the country, including Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Guangzhou,

to name a few of the most visible, have likewise been gaining traction in recent days. These have certainly been brought to a head by the recent events in Zhengzhou and Urumqi, but also represent a more general discontent with the ongoing and seemingly endless ratcheting down of individual freedoms and restrictions on even so much as basic mobility in the name of healthcare, all while COVID cases continue to rise. Protests have broken out in districts across Beijing, with residents liberating themselves from their neighborhoods' lockdowns en masse to march in the frigid streets, and at times tear down the corrugated sheet metal walls and barricades which now line most roads and surround apartment complexes. Public speeches have been made, with one notable example, a man protesting the high price of vegetables and inability to go outside, ending with police attempting to drag him away via headlock, only for the assembled

crowd to break them up and spirit the man to safety. In Shanghai as well, things have once again reached a boiling point between police and angry, disaffected citizens. Faced with random police sweeps and closures for no apparent reason, some citizens have taken to lecturing the uniformed thugs to their faces about the nature of what they're doing versus what they should be doing. When the police attempted to forcibly close an upscale barber shop on Saturday, for instance, a patron, then mid-haircut, proceeded to dress down the uniformed officers. He said, quote, Young men, young men, let me give you some knowledge. As an ordinary Shanghai citizen, let me tell you, you are not wanted here.

You are not needed here acting like this. Before you showed up, the storefront, all of them outside, were so prosperous, so harmonious, and so warm. That's what Shanghai is about. That's the real Shanghai. I tell you, that is what Shanghai is like. But you wouldn't know anything about that. Shanghai doesn't need your type here. Go back to your home villages. End quote.

All to the applause of the other patrons and workers of the shop. What's more, one of Puxi's main business thoroughfares, the doubtless not coincidentally chosen Orumchi Road, on Saturday night, an estimated 500 to 1,000 or more protesters marched through the streets, demanding a lift to the lockdowns and chanting, freedom, end tests, throw down your masks, unlock Xinjiang, unlock China, and predictably, solid rounds of fuck COVID zero. Predictably, police were called out en masse to line the streets, and then to confront, harass, and then instigate physical conflicts with the protesters, dragging some away for arrest and awaiting police fans.

That, however, did not cow many of the others, who proceeded to, once again, harangue the police for their brutal methods. Said two women to a group of young police blocking the path to one of their vehicles, apparently with an arrestee locked within, quote, What do you make? 20,000 yuan per month? 240,000 a year? Did you really sell your soul for so little? Don't you think it's ridiculous? You're what, in your 20s or 30s? You sold your whole life to this system for such a tiny amount of money. Don't you think it's pathetic?

Who did you drag to the car? Who's in the car? Answer me. Zombie? You think we're a joke? You're the joke, you clown. End quote. Online and within the tightly controlled Chinese intro web, things have gone as per the norm. Floods of comments, saddened, enraged, firebrand and reformist alike,

have been methodically deleted by the official censors, in which entire topics and even basic words suddenly deemed sensitive now return zero or almost zero results on Chinese search engines. In their ever-rily witty manner, Chinese web users have hostily complied by flooding all such topics with paragraphs of nothing but repeated, bland, safe words such as write, write, write, write, write, correct, correct, correct, correct, correct, support, support, support, support, support, in lieu of what they actually mean. In-person protesters have adopted a similar tactic, holding up signs in public that are

either completely blank, or as in the case of a lone protester outside of Jing'an Temple, a piece of paper simply reading, you all know what I want to say. Again, it's impossible to know where this goes from here. Does the government attempt to tighten its grip, relax, find a way out of its endless roundabout of lockdown restrictions that are depressing its economy and enraging and exhausting its citizens, or double down on the policy in the name of safety and order? I have my bets, but who can say for sure? One thing is certain, the times remain interesting. Signing off for now. Good night and good luck.

And as always, thanks for listening. you Hi everyone, this is Scott. If you want to learn about the world's oldest civilizations, find out how they were rediscovered, follow the story of Mark Antony and Cleopatra's descendants over 10 generations, or take a deep dive into the Iron Age or the Hellenistic era, then check out the Ancient World Podcast. Available on all podcasting platforms or go to ancientworldpodcast.com. That's the Ancient World Podcast.