China rebels for democracy

Street protests across China followed the death of ten people in a fire in a block of flats in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang (East Turkestan, the Uyghur region) on 24 November.

Protests in Urumqi itself, and in many other cities across China in the following few days, said that the ten had died because Covid curbs stopped them fleeing the fire.

As of 29 November, the protests had ebbed for the time being, but they represent a new peak of an agitation building up for months.

On 13 October, just before the ceremonial Congress of China’s ruling party which would reaffirm the cult and the authority of Xi Jinping, a lone protester dropped banners from Sitong Bridge in Beijing. He called for food, freedom, elections, against PCR testing, lockdowns, and dictatorship, and for the removal of Xi Jinping.

On 28-31 October, workers at the Foxconn iPhone assembly plan in Zhengzhou, which has over 200,000 employees, fled the plan to escape the “closed loop” imposed as a Covid curb: workers were forced to stay in the factory compound, at work or in their dormitories, at all times. Even if that reduced Covid risk outside the plant, it increased it inside.

On 23-24 November, workers at the plant newly recruited to replace those who had fled protested over work conditions and non-payment of bonuses they had been promised.

Protests by people locked into residential compounds under Covid curbs, and having difficulty getting food and medicines, have been flaring up for some time. This time there have been general public protests on the streets, in several cities across China, and on university campuses, with a general political message.

People have held up blank sheets of paper as protests against censorship. Explicit calls have been made for Xi Jinping to stand down. At Tsinghua university, a leading university in Beijing, students protested with papers showing Friedmann equations from general relativity theory (“Friedmann” conveying “freed man”). University authorities responded by encouraging students to leave campus early for holidays.

Even if a new police clampdown dampens these protests, they are probably the most politicised and generalised since the actions centred on Tienanmen Square in Beijing in April-June 1989, and the Democracy Wall movement in 1978-79. The police have been quicker to move in than in those previous rounds of action, and the regime’s capacities of surveillance have increased, but there are new tensions which may make this more explosive.

This round has also sparked protests by overseas Chinese in many countries, including Britain. These have included people from mainland China, who usually in recent years have kept quiet politically for fear of surveillance by Chinese embassies.

China is not communist or socialist in any sense we recognise. It has a system of vast inequality, based on the exploitation of wage-labour for the profit of private capitalists and top state officials, and with fascist-level repression (no free speech, no independent media, no legal opposition parties). It has no independent trade unions, though largely unofficial strikes have become relatively common, with a peak (so far) in 2015-6.

Workers’ Liberty urges the labour movement to follow the lead of groups like Labour Solidarity With Hong Kong and the Uyghur Solidarity Campaign in backing workers’ rights, democratic rights, and national minority rights in China.

We want the labour movement to take an independent internationalist stance, proving itself the best ally of Chinese workers and students and opposing all wings of our own capitalist class — those friendly with the Chinese regime for the sake of their investments and contracts in China, those focused on helping US or European-based businesses outdo Chinese competitors, and those straddling the divide.

There is no equation between the Chinese protests and the far-right-tinged anti-vax, anti-lockdown, and anti-mask protests in other countries which peaked in late 2021 and early 2022. China reports very low Covid deaths, but we don’t know how much its counts are underestimated and how much death and blighting of life by other means has been the cost. The ultra-lockdowns in China have been far more intense than those used elsewhere, and have been possible only with a radically repressive state system.

Long ago we argued that a “zero Covid” line is unrealistic even with such ultra-lockdowns. The Chinese government is locked in a hopeless cycle of ultra-lockdown after ultra-lockdown, while Covid counts are at their highest yet, because it has an ageing population with a low level of vaccination of elderly people; it has many crowded cities; it probably has a low level of immunity through previous mild infections; it has inadequate health-care capacities; and it has chosen to use only Chinese-made vaccines rather than more effective ones. The rational way out is a rapid drive to boost vaccination, improve ventilation in buildings, and expand health care, using more moderate lockdowns, introduced by democratic assent, to slow spread in the meantime. Such a drive is entirely consistent with the Chinese protesters’ demands for democratic rights, but difficult to get from Xi Jinping.