Tag: Shanghai (China)

The Chinese Dream, Denied

Chin@Strategy

The narrow alleyways of Haizhu district have long beckoned to China’s strivers, people like Xie Pan, a textile worker from a mountainous tea-growing area in central China. Home to one of the country’s biggest fabric markets, Haizhu houses worker dormitories and textile factories in brightly colored buildings stacked so close that neighbors can shake hands out their windows. Once a smattering of rural villages, the area became a manufacturing hub as China opened its economy decades ago. The government had promised to step back and let people unleash their ambitions,…

How China’s Police Used Phones and Faces to Track Protesters

Chin@Strategy

On Sunday, when Mr. Zhang went to protest China’s strict Covid policies in Beijing, he thought he came prepared to go undetected. He wore a balaclava and goggles to cover his face. When it seemed that plainclothes police officers were following him, he ducked into the bushes and changed into a new jacket. He lost his tail. That night, when Mr. Zhang, who is in his 20s, returned home without being arrested, he thought he was in the clear. But the police called the next day. They knew he had…

Protests Stretch China’s Censorship to Its Limits

Chin@Strategy

He too shared videos of the protest on WeChat, though he deleted them after 24 hours in an effort to evade the authorities, who had begun to go after some demonstrators. Though only up shortly, his videos changed the minds of two people he had thought would be unreceptive: his parents. “My parents, like many Chinese parents, used to think what I’m doing is meaningless and childish, but they have changed dramatically in the past two days,” Mr. Qu said. His parents now understand why he would participate in such…

Proud, Scared and Conflicted. What the China Protesters Told Me.

Chin@Strategy

They went to their first demonstrations. They chanted their first protest slogans. They had their first encounters with the police. Then they went home, shivering in disbelief at how they had challenged the most powerful authoritarian government in the world and the most iron-fisted leader China has seen in decades. Young Chinese are protesting the country’s harsh “zero-Covid” policy and even urging its top leader, Xi Jinping, to step down. It’s something China hasn’t seen since 1989, when the ruling Communist Party brutally cracked down on the pro-democracy demonstrators, mostly…

China Regroups to Snuff Out a Wave of Covid Protests

Chin@Strategy

After China experienced its boldest and most widespread protests in decades, defying Xi Jinping, a Communist Party leader who prizes his reputation for ironclad authority, his security apparatus is scrambling to reassert control. Public security personnel and vehicles have blanketed potential protest sites. Police officers are searching some residents’ phones for prohibited apps. Officials are going to the homes of would-be protesters to warn them against illegal activities and are taking some away for questioning. Censors are scrubbing protest symbols and slogans from social media. On Monday, the demonstrations were…

China Protests Over ‘Zero Covid’ Follow Months of Economic Pain

Chin@Strategy

The toll of China’s unwavering approach to fighting Covid has rippled through the world’s second-largest economy for months: Youth unemployment reached a record 20 percent, corporate profits sagged, and economic growth fell well below Beijing’s own projections. The economic pain has intensified the pressure to ease pandemic restrictions to salvage the flagging economy and restore some semblance of normal life. Frustration with the government’s zero-tolerance Covid strategy, which has failed to prevent a big jump in cases, escalated over the weekend as a population tired of unpredictable lockdowns, extended quarantines…

The Covid Protests in China, Explained

Chin@Strategy

“Lift the lockdown,” the protesters screamed in a city in China’s far west. On the other side of the country, in Shanghai, demonstrators held up sheets of blank white paper, turning them into an implicit but powerful sign of defiance. One protester, who was later detained by the police, was carrying only flowers. Over the weekend, protests against China’s strict Covid restrictions ricocheted across the country in a rare case of nationwide civil unrest. There had been signs of dissent, but the new wave of anger may pose a bigger…

Protests Erupt in Shanghai and Other Chinese Cities Over Covid Controls

Chin@Strategy

Protests spread to cities and campuses in China on Saturday night amid rising public anger at the country’s strict but faltering controls against the spread of Covid, with a crowd in Shanghai going so far as to call for the removal of the national leader, Xi Jinping. The demonstration occurred after an outpouring of anger online and after a street protest erupted on Friday in Urumqi, the regional capital of Xinjiang in western China, where at least 10 people died and nine others were injured a day earlier in an…

China Is Finally Trying to Fix Its Housing Crisis

Chin@Strategy

More than a year after one of China’s biggest real estate developers began to collapse, trouble has rippled through cities across the country. Dozens of other developers have also missed debt payments, the sale of new homes has plunged and construction cranes have come to a standstill at many sites. This week the Chinese government, which until now has stayed largely on the sidelines of the country’s housing crash, has taken its most forceful steps so far to try to minimize the damage from the turmoil that has enveloped China…

Outbreaks Test China’s Efforts to Limit the Cost of ‘Zero Covid’

Chin@Strategy

Barely a week after no longer requiring residents to show a negative Covid test to use mass transit, the authorities in the northern Chinese city of Shijiazhuang have locked down much of the city for five days as infections surge. In Shanghai, many neighborhoods have begun requiring frequent Covid tests again only days after telling residents that the tests were seldom needed. And across much of Beijing, officials have ordered schools and many businesses to close as daily cases rose over the past week to more than 1,400 and the…