The History of China - Shanghai Lockdown Update - 10/14/2022 - "The Banner Man vs. The Ban Hammer"

Episode Date: October 14, 2022

As I am once again locked in at home, things are getting rather touchy on a bridge in Beijing, as well as online, threatening to spoil the Party's Big Party... All due credit to Samuel Wade for excellent episode name idea Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts. Shanghai Lockdown Update, October 14th, 2022. The Bannerman versus the Banhammer. Here I sit, as I have done so often this year, in my room, my recording area, locked inside my building and unable to go outside yet again because my building has been placed once more under a provisional 48-hour lockdown thanks to close contacts. These are becoming more and more prevalent yet again as the weather continues to cool off and, you know, kind of sickness season takes hold yet again. But in fact, this time, that's actually not why I'm here recording this little side episode, because at this point, that's just a minor annoyance. This has gotten mostly figured out so we can get deliveries and stuff now.

So this is just kind of a headache more than a crisis at this point. So at least we've got that going for us. Instead, what I'm recording about today is, in fact, not part of Shanghai at all, at least not directly, but actually up in Beijing. Yesterday, that is October 13th, atop the Sitong Elevated Bridge in Beijing at around 1 p.m., an unnamed construction worker set either some kind of fire or smoke source and then proceeded to unfurl a series of hand-painted banners in protest of the imminently upcoming 20th National People's Congress that's set to give Xi Jinping his unprecedented third term as president and chairman of the PRC. The first of the banners proclaimed, and I'll just give you the translation because you don't want to hear my Chinese,

it said, We want food, not COVID tests. Reform, not cultural revolution. We want freedom, not lockdowns. Elections, not rulers. We want dignity, not lies. We want to be citizens, not slaves. The second of the two banners read, Boycott classes, boycott work, depose the traitorous despot Xi Jinping. The banners were quickly pulled down by police when they responded, and the man has since disappeared, whether into police custody or simply out of sight,

remains uncertain and probably will remain uncertain. Since then, the government of China and its censors online have been furiously working at trying to scrub its internet, or more appropriately its intranet, of any and all mention of the incident. On English-language social media abroad, there's been a pretty significant but largely ham-handed and rather ridiculous attempt to downplay the event in a nothingness, saying it was just one man and indicates no wider sentiment. And even if it meant something larger than that, censorship is good anyway. Well, let's look into that idea. The idea of what's the big deal? It's just one single protester. Well, to me, that sounds an awful lot like someone on a ship saying, what's the big deal?

That iceberg looks tiny from here. Here's the deal with these kind of heavy-handed sensorial regimes. They don't largely operate on actively top-down direct censorship. Rather, they rely on the willful self-censorship of the populace itself. The people know the rules, or can either figure them out or intuit them quickly enough as they change, as they often tend to do. And we'll get into that a little bit more in just a minute. They know also that there are consequences for being singled out as one of these squeaky wheels who refuses to shut up. It's well understood that every so often an example is made, and usually quite publicly. For instance, the police will from time to time release videos of people strapped into interrogation tiger chairs in the police department, often after hours

and hours of interrogation or so-called tea time with the police, sobbingly confessing to any crime the police want to lob at them. The one that comes to my mind, at least, stemmed from the man the night before having drunkenly texted into his WeChat something mildly derogatory about the cops. Now, these aren't leaked videos. They're not scandals, and they're not suppressed by any kind of media in China either. They're actively put out and published by the police. They hound individuals around the world, PRC nationals who speak out about their government from places like Australia, New Zealand, Canada, America, the UK, or elsewhere. They call them, they demand they stop, they go so far as to insinuate threats against their families from time to time should they

continue to speak out. And then they go and they publish that online for other people to watch so that they know that these are examples of what might start happening to you or your family if you step out of line. Another thing that can happen is that your WeChat account could be permanently locked, which essentially freezes you out of your finances. As I said before, you get called in for tea by the cops. They can come in knocking on your front door, and if you don't answer, bursting in at any time of the day or night. In that kind of environment, and especially leading up to very sensitive national events

like the National People's Congress's 20th meetup, it's just generally understood that you better zip your mouth especially hard. So into that ecosystem, for someone to just so publicly and flagrantly fly against that generally known knowledge, knowing all too well that there would definitely be consequences, is an act just so self-destructively insane that it simply must speak to a widespread popular dissatisfaction with the status quo, the tip of the iceberg peeking above the surface. an act just so self-destructively insane that it simply must speak to a widespread popular dissatisfaction with the status quo, the tip of the iceberg peeking above the surface. Now, I can speak to that generally just in terms of overall human psychology, but I also know this in my own life and interactions with people around me here in Shanghai. There is a high level of dissatisfaction with how the government has been handling itself, has been handling this ongoing COVID crisis,

and that has flared up time and again in terms of protests that are swiftly cracked down upon. And the regime, whether the municipal government here in Shanghai or the national government up in Beijing, it understands that. It knows that. You better bet your ass it does. If it truly thought that this is just one angry guy, that'd be it. It'd be a nothing, like it is in most countries where there's a protest. The government would simply shrug and move on. Let them chant. At most, maybe arrest the guy for public disorder, take down the signs, and that would be all. After all, if it's just one guy,

what would the harm be? If it's just some minority sentiment, where would the danger lie? Of course, that's not the case, though. As in so many cases, protests cannot be tolerated in China. Instead, they went full goblin mode, locking down posts with a verb that I personally have not seen since the Shanghai two-month totally-not-a-lockdown delete fest. You cannot even post terms like Beijing, Brave, or Bridge on Chinese websites at this point. Beijing now turns out only about 900 search results from the beginning of time on services like Weibo, all of which are now from official accounts, whereas Shanghai, Guangzhou,

and Shenzhen run into the tens of millions of search returns of any and every form. At this point, it's a bit like trying to look for a black hole. You can't observe it directly, but you can still see its gravitational effects on everything around it. Affected as well are seemingly unrelated terms like I saw it or even violated rules and regulations. As Riley stated by another unnamed Twitter poster, quote, we've reached the point where both I saw it and I didn't see anything could be illegal, end quote. That's the seriousness with which Beijing is taking this just one guy, essentially flying himself directly into the alien superweapon as it powers up.

But, and of course it must be said, he's not just one guy. In spite of the frantic censorship out of Beijing, evidence of support has still managed to be secured by those across the Chinese web who share a sense of frustration. Here are a few translated examples. Oh brave one, I salute you. Don't be silent, speak up. Don't be a servant, be a brave person. Courage is humanity's most precious quality.

I hope the brave one stays safe. Brave one, we don't deserve you. You may strike fast, but you can't kill every brave person. I hope you are free, brave one. So this country does have some brave people after all. Unfortunately for this brave individual protester himself, it is my opinion that it's highly unlikely that he managed to evade capture and detention. Much like the infamous Tank Man of 1989 in Tiananmen Square, the dark reality is that his fate may remain forever unknown, and likely very grim indeed. Such is the irony of a so-called strongman regime. In truth, they tend to be so fragile that even one man with a hand-painted banner

can utterly ruin their big coronation ceremony. Anyways, thank you for once again indulging me in a little bit of current events. Future history, if you will. Next episode will be out soon. Hopefully so will I. And as always, thanks for listening. The French Revolution set Europe ablaze. It was an age of enlightenment and progress, but also of tyranny and oppression. It was an age of glory and an age of tragedy. One man stood above it all. This was the age of Napoleon.

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