How common are protests in China?

Editor’s note (November 28th): This article has been updated.

ON NOVEMBER 24th a fire in an apartment building in Urumqi, a city in far-west China, killed ten people. Many blamed strict covid-19 restrictions for the death toll. Protests against lockdown controls have since spread across China. Over the weekend of November 26th and 27th thousands of people gathered in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities to protest against lockdown restrictions that over the past three years have confined millions to their homes or workplaces, often for long periods. Some of the protests are explicitly political and take aim at China’s president. In Shanghai people chanted “Down with Xi Jinping!”, an unprecedented call for regime change. Kevin Slaten, a researcher at Freedom House, an American think-tank, has counted 27 protests between November 25th and 27th across 15 regions of China.

This month’s outbreak of unrest is unusually large, but follows other recent shows of discontent. Such outbursts often go undocumented in authoritarian China, where officials swiftly disperse protesters and scrub from the internet any mention of dissent. But internet users have long been skilled at evading attempts to block sensitive messages. Careful tracking of online posts and short-lived news reports can help make clear the scale and causes of unrest (see chart).

China Dissent Monitor, a new database by Mr Slaten and his colleagues, recorded 822 protests across China between May 18th and November 22nd, ie, before the latest round of unrest. Its data come from news reports, social-media posts and information from NGOs operating in the country. They add to a growing body of research on dissent in the country. For instance, China Labour Bulletin, an NGO based in Hong Kong, monitors protests by workers. It has recorded 688 strikes so far in 2022. Although these databases cannot register every outburst of dissent, they provide an insight into the issues that are angering Chinese the most.

The recent protests were sparked by frustration at the government’s “zero-covid” policy. But trouble has been brewing for some time. Most documented flashpoints this year have been related to the country’s embattled property sector. For nearly three years China’s policymakers have been cracking down on mounting debt by curbing developers’ access to finance. Covid-related lockdowns have also trapped workers at home, putting on hold hundreds of housing projects. Many units had already been bought; over the summer buyers in at least 93 cities stopped making mortgage payments in protest over their empty lots. Delays to housing projects provoked 244 protests across the country, according to China Dissent Monitor.

The database lists demonstrations in nearly every province, but most have taken place in Beijing and the wealthy coastal cities. This could be because residents of rich, urban areas are not as used as others to mistreatment by the authorities. Alternatively, news from these hubs could be spreading more easily to the outside world.

China’s leaders will be paying attention. On WeChat, China’s main messaging platform, censors could barely keep up with the flood of posts about the protests. Not since the death of Li Wenliang, a doctor who raised the alarm about covid before dying from the virus himself, has there been such an explicit outpouring of public discontent. China’s regime has a whole arsenal of methods to quell unrest. The latest spasm will put them to the test.■