Banana peels for Xi Jinping

There has been a Soviet joke that has been circulating for some time in China, about a man who is arrested for protesting in Moscow’s Red Square holding a blank sheet of paper.

“How can they arrest me?” objects the man in one version.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Everyone knows,” the policeman replies, “what you mean.”

That old joke served as the inspiration for some of the blank sheets of paper protesters have been displaying in China in recent days.

Everyone in the country knew what the protesters meant, but they were afraid to say it.

And when everyone can mentally fill a blank sheet of paper with the frustration and anger felt by so many ordinary Chinese, that is a challenge that the de facto emperor, Xi Jinpingit cannot suppress individual protesters as easily as possible.

Xi has meticulously cultivated a cult of personality around him as the good-natured “Uncle Xi” – whose motto may be “Make China Great Again” – but in big cities it is now obvious that he is regarded by many as a stubborn and ruthless dictator. not terribly effective.

So where will these lead? protests?

While these demonstrations are said to be an echo of the Tiananmen movement of 1989, they’re actually not that far off.

The demonstrations of 1989 were held in more dand 300 cities from across China, gathered more than a million people in central Beijing, blocked entrances to the Zhongnanhai leadership compound and benefited from a crippling Chinese-led power struggle that delayed the crackdown.

Instead, the Xi regime is already dragging protesters out and frisking people on the subway for contraband, like the app instagram on their cell phones.

Challenging the national government in China today is inviting imprisonment – ​​a man was arrested in Shanghai for bringing flowers and making veiled comments – so it’s hard to see how open resistance could be sustained.

Historically in China, mass protests have not arisen when conditions were most intolerable (such as the famine of 1959-1962), but when people thought they could get away with it, such as the Hundred Flowers Campaign of 1956 on April 5, 1976 , the loosening of the Democracy Wall of 1978-79, the student protests of 1986 and Tiananmen in 1989.

On the other hand, in 1989 I was the Beijing bureau chief of the New York Times and most people thought I was impossible there was a big outcry that year, until it did.

human courage is contagious and unpredictable.

So run away from anyone who predicts with certainty where China is headed.

One of China’s few continuities over the past 150 years has been the periodic and unexpected discontinuities.

However, whatever happens over the next few weeks and months, something major may have changed.

“It’s very significant, because it’s a decisive break from the ‘great silence’said Xiao Qiang, founder and editor of China Digital Times.

“It is now common knowledge that the emperor wears no clothes.”

Xi may succeed in re-imposing the “Great Silence,” Xiao acknowledged, but, he added, “it’s still a different China.”

This is in part because while there have been many protests across the country, they have generally been localized protests over labor disputes, land confiscation or pollution.

In contrast, China’s policy of “zero-COVID” stands for Xi.

He is the owner.

Chinese who denounce COVID lockdowns know they are criticizing Xi.

Xi has gotten himself into trouble and will have a hard time relaxing his hated COVID policy.

This is a problem created by Xi himself.

He refused import highly effective mRNA vaccines, and China’s effort to vaccinate the elderly has been anemic.

Only 40% of Chinese over the age of 80 have received a recall, so a relaxation of COVID rules could lead to COVID-19 killing hundreds of thousands.

Meanwhile, the current zero COVID policy has devastated the economy and antagonized the populace.

It seems unsustainable.

“People have lost hope”, confided a Chinese friend who is the son of a leader but who is now making fun of the Communist Party, adding that Beijing “feels calm and dead”.

From business owners to taxi drivers, Chinese citizens battle constant COVID testing and lockdowns, then watch throngs of maskless fans at matches on TV. Qatar World Cup, enjoy a normal life.

Wednesday death jiang zeminformer leader of the Communist Party, complicates the picture.

Jiang expanded economic reforms and offered very limited insight into political reform (for example, he opened access to The Times website in China in 2001; it was blocked in 2012 under a successor).

And the deaths of previous leaders, such as Zhou Enlai and Hu Yaobang, have become forms of protest for the Chinese, who have entered nominal mourning.

A feature of Chinese protests is that, when even mild criticism is forbidden, people resort to it satire and sarcasm, which is tantamount to mocking Chinese propaganda.

Gene Sharp, an American academic who literally wrote the manual for overthrowing dictators, said that one of the greatest threats to tyrants was humor.

The autocrats they could survive serious pleas for free speech, but deflated when mocked.

I wonder if this will be the challenge of the naked emperor in the future, even if it restores the Great Silence.

Chinese university students sang the national anthem because it includes these words (written before the 1949 communist revolution) “Arise, you who refuse to be slaves… The Chinese nation faces its greatest danger.”

It would be embarrassing to arrest young people for singing the national anthem, but – like that blank piece of paper – everyone knows what that means.

It may be intolerable for Xi.

“If you get three or five people together and sing the national anthem, they arrest you,” predicted a veteran Chinese journalist who also covered Tiananmen.

When the police arrived, protesters sometimes chanted satirical slogans in favor of the zero-COVID policy, such as “We want COVID tests!”

When protesters in Beijing were criticized for being pawns of foreign forces, one of them wasted no time working with the crowd.

“By foreign forces,” he asked, “you mean Marx and Engels?“.

Chinese netizens are discussing “banana peels” (xiang jiao pi) and “shrimp musk” (xia tai) these days.

How come? Because the former has the same initials as Xi Jinping. And “prawn moss” sounds like the Chinese word for “resign.”

A dictator’s dilemma:

How do you arrest people who post about banana peels without increasing the ridicule that undermines your government?

c.2022 The New York Times Society