BEIJING/HONG KONG, Nov 28 (Reuters) – One year after “white paper” protests flared across China against stringent COVID restrictions, Yicheng Huang fears this rare show of public dissent may eventually be forgotten by the Chinese public amid state censorship.
The wave of civil disobedience which erupted on Nov 25 last year was unprecedented in President Xi Jinping’s decade in power, which has seen a widespread crackdown on civil society.
While the protests against the zero-COVID policy were quickly suppressed by police, they helped hasten the end of three years of some of the world’s strictest pandemic curbs.
“Many protesters experienced being part of a civic collective for the first time,” said Huang, who fled to Germany in March after narrowly avoiding detention during protests in Shanghai. “For Chinese people, this is like first love.”
Six participants based in China and overseas told Reuters they felt a mixture of hope and ambivalence towards the demonstrations, which they said helped to end COVID restrictions but failed to achieve lasting political change.
Many spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of state retribution, after last year’s widespread police crackdown. Reuters…
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