A professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College, Minxin Pei is a native of Shanghai. Among China’s first students to pursue advanced studies in the United States in the 1980s following the Cultural Revolution, Pei earned a Doctoral degree from Harvard University under the tutelage of the late Samuel P. Huntington.

Pei, who endured the insanity of the Cultural Revolution and the rapid transformation of opening and reform, has never minced words in asserting that China’s totalitarian establishment has entered its period of decline. At the same time, however, he stresses that “the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is very adept at learning.”

A devastating fire revealed fissures in China’s stability-safeguarding structure to Minxin Pei.

On November 24, an apartment building in Urumqi, a major city in Xinjiang Province, caught fire. Due to the extreme “Zero Covid” lockdown measures in place, 10 people were unable to escape and lost their lives, igniting protests on the streets of China.

In cities from Urumqi, Shanghai and Beijing to Wuhan and Guangzhou, protests flared up around China. From mourning the deceased to calls for ending zero Covid and demands for freedom, protesters raised blank sheets of white paper and called for revolution.

It was the biggest public protest movement in the PRC since the 1989 June Fourth Tiananmen Square clashes.

Do the protests reflect problems with Beijing’s governance? Do they represent challenges to President Xi Jinping’s leadership? The following is our exclusive interview with Minxin Pei, edited for clarity and brevity.

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White Paper Movement is Not a June Fourth Replay

CommonWealth (CW): Compared to previous protests in China, what are the similarities and differences with these protests?

Minxin Pei: I wouldn’t go as far as saying that this is a replay of the June Fourth movement. For instance, this time largely involves young students, as well as some other members of the public. That is different from June Fourth.

Second, protests broke out simultaneously in major cities around the country, including the capital of Beijing. This is similar to June Fourth in this respect. Further, they have political demands. In the past, local protests in China have ordinarily been about demands over work or housing, but this time they are clearly demanding freedom, for the government accountability over failed policy, and even pointing fingers at Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The intensity of the slogans this time was unprecedented. In the past, nobody ever said they wanted to overthrow Hu Jintao or the CCP to relinquish power.

However, the biggest difference from the Tiananmen Square protests is that the government reacted slowly back then due to factional splits within the party. However, this time there were no fissures in the government, so it responded quickly.

Within three days of the outbreak of the recent protests, they had more or less been quelled. As it stands, it is hard to imagine another wave of large-scale protests to which the government would stand idly by and not respond. In contrast, the Tiananmen Square protests continued for several months. This is a very big difference.

Another difference is that the Tiananmen Square protests happened on a much greater scale. In the early period, from April 15 to around the 25th, I estimate that fewer than 10,000 people took part around the entire country. But after April 26, when PRC leader Deng Xiaoping published an editorial in the People’s Daily newspaper defining the students as “seditionists,”, further exacerbating tensions, the next day we saw demonstrations on a large scale.

I reckon that Beijing learned its lesson at the time. If the recent protests weren’t handled well and continued for a week or longer, the crowds would spill out like floodwater. But the government stopped up the valve, and the protests don’t appear to be larger than those during the period of Tiananmen Square protests. 

Over the short term, the Chinese government adopted a two-handed strategy: First, police manpower was boosted to control the situation and keep protests from breaking out again; second, I believe that Beijing is currently handling it dispassionately, but that is just temporary and doesn’t mean that there won’t be reprisals.

Protestors achieved over half of goals

CW: Has Beijing gotten the protests under control at this time?

Pei: It is essentially under control right now. The CCP is very capable of controlling the situation. First, it takes a soft approach, but if protestors misjudge the government’s intentions over the next three to five days, mistaking its dispassionate treatment for a show of weakness and continuing to hit the streets, the government will crack down with additional force, taking a “hardline” stance.

China’s population is also really smart, and in my opinion the protesters accomplished at least half of their objectives.

First, the protesters let the government, city residents, and even the international community know that the existing “Dynamic Zero Covid” policy is a failure, and that the government must change it. The protesters’ signals were unequivocal. The government’s indications regarding pandemic policies over the past two days include the pronouncement that it seeks to boost vaccine uptake among the elderly, showing that the government listened to the voice of the protesters.

These days protesters are united, and shouting on the streets is effective. However, if they take to the streets again this week, it could backfire on them.

Young folks might not remember the Tiananmen Square protests, but the biggest failure of the protesters then was not quitting while they were ahead. And ultimately, even Zhao Ziyang, representing the “enlightened” wing of the party, was forced to step down, and things came to a close with the bloody crackdown.

Now it looks as if the recent protesters were spontaneous, and appear to have quit while they were still ahead.

When victims learn to get around the Great Firewall

CW: China’s multilayered surveillance and control measures make it difficult for Chinese activists to band together. Especially with the health codes restricting movement since the pandemic, many people are pessimistic about the possibilities of civil movements in China. However, in this case we have unexpectedly seen sparks appear in areas around the country. Why is that?

Pei: It is difficult for an intentional organized movement to get underway in China. However, viewed from a socio-political perspective, organizational coordination is completely unnecessary; all it takes is a few conditions to produce simultaneous protests in multiple locations. And this event met all of  those conditions.

First, to take part in protests one must be a victim. From early in the year through now, China’s “Active Zero Covid” policy produced countless victims, immediately creating a large potential victim cohort in which everyone had a grievance.

The zero Covid policy provided the kindling, and the Xinjiang fire was the spark.

I should also mention the factor of psychological expectations. Prior to the Twentieth National People’s Congress, many people were more tolerant towards the government, understanding that the party needed strict controls to hold the NPC, and expecting them to ease following the congress. However, once the meeting was over there was no relaxation, making many people even angrier.

Another reason is the push from communications technology. People “scaled the Great Firewall of China” to get on Twitter, where they saw the movement of people mourning the victims of the fire and went to participate.

What appeared to be many random circumstances also came together in Shanghai. Having been locked down earlier this year for over three months, many city residents suffered greatly. Shanghai has its own Urumqi North Road, and the number of city youths that routinely get around the Great Firewall of China is great.

Cracks showing in China’s stability maintenance structure

CW: Can this round of protests be seen as cracks showing in China’s stability maintenance structure?

Pei: That’s right.

China’s stability maintenance is not an infallible machine; it has structural gaps.

I recently finished writing a book on China’s surveillance system, and I discovered that it is a completely top-down system.

China schedules sensitive events according to its “political calendar”, such as the National People’s Congress and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference meetings, National Day, and the anniversary of June Fourth. I am guessing that the government did not target the vigils in Shanghai as sensitive incidents, which allowed the protests to take place.

Usually, on June Fourth every year the police are deployed and in position in advance, and authorized to use force. But this time there were clearly no such orders.

Looking further at China’s bureaucracy, many zero Covid and small lockdown zones were executed by lower level officials working overtime. Any machine, no matter how good, will run into trouble if it runs around the clock for nine months straight.

As the zero covid policy was not only a hardship on the people’s lives and livelihoods, it also ran grassroots-level officials ragged. So although the emergence of protests was an isolated event, it was not entirely unexpected.

CW: From the looks of official media these past two days, the government is doubling down on its zero Covid policy. What can we expect from China’s zero Covid policy in the future?

Pei: China is very adept at saying one thing and doing another. We can expect the pandemic containment policy to move towards being strict on the inside and relaxed on the outside.

Over the next week or two, if the number of cases keeps rising, then it will signify the relaxation of the policy, at least in comparison to how strict it was.

CW: How can the impact of the protests on Xi Jinping be assessed?

Pei: This is the fifth week of Xi Jinping’s third term as state president. It is a severe test of his ability to govern, and the zero Covid policy is obviously being challenged publically.

In the near term, we’ll see how he handles the situation.

Over the longer term, we should monitor developments in several areas. Everyone can clearly see the public’s disenchantment with the government, which was never openly expressed but is now gaining traction. So how can Xi Jinping and the party mend the damage to their image? Once government authority is lost, regaining it is no easy task, and this will be a mid- and long-term test for the government.

In addition, does the government look to rely on exerting high pressure, or governance through dialogue, policy adjustments, and easing tensions?

Real challenge to stability policy: withering economy

CW: You have said before that the foundation of the CCP’s legitimacy is rooted in economic security. What can you tell from the recent protests?

Pei: These protests are directly linked to the crude and harsh zero Covid policy. But the background to it is that the zero Covid policy caused the economy to shrink and wither. Without that background, I reckon that the protests would not have been so intense.

Over the past decade, Xi Jinping has stressed ideology and downplayed economic growth.

Yet now the zero Covid policy has caused tremendous losses to the economy, impacting people’s lives.

How to recover from this damage in the wake of the zero Covid policy is a thorny question. The recent protests show that, for the CCP, if the economy isn’t handled well, Beijing will pay a huge political price.

Further, over the past several years the CCP believed that its stability-at-all-costs structure was effective. But was that because the economy was good and the people weren’t making trouble, or because the police were so effective that the people stayed in line? At this point, we can rule out economic factors, and clearly see that relying on the police, surveillance, and stability before everything else to maintain power will ultimately lead to problems.

CW: What direct changes will happen to the Beijing government in the wake of the protests? Will it provide any lessons and inspiration for Chinese civil movements going forward?

Pei: The Chinese Communist Party is very adept at learning. It will learn many lessons from this, and bolster the surveillance system.

It is quite likely that if a fire breaks out in the future the government will issue emergency commands from top to bottom. The “caution light” will blink more frequently on stability maintenance overall going forward, and local level officials will be worked to exhaustion trying to implement it.

Civic groups will find it hard to achieve any breakthroughs in China. However, if similar unanticipated conditions arise again, it could lead to the further growth of civil movements in China.

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Translated by David Toman
Edited by TC Lin
Uploaded by Ian Huang