Chinese “White Paper Protests” end highly restrictive zero-COVID policies

In August 2022, in response to highly infectious variants of COVID-19, the Chinese government instituted harsh rolling lockdowns and travel restrictions in the far western Xinjiang region. As part of China’s “zero-COVID” strategy, the government implemented forced quarantines and lockdowns, paralyzing supply lines and the economy, and leading to dwindling supplies of food, medicine, and other necessities. These lockdowns also sparked fears among Xinjiang’s Uyghurs, a Turkic ethnic group against which the Chinese Communist Party waged a brutal security campaign of surveillance and forced relocation into detention camps, along with other Muslim ethnic minorities. With residents stuck in their homes amidst food shortages and worsening medical conditions, public discontent continued to increase. Even as the local governor acknowledged governmental shortcomings in the COVID response, the authorities continued to censor complaints online and crack down on criticisms, including arresting people for “spreading rumors” about the lockdown that they claimed “disrupted social order.”

This state of affairs came to a head on 24 November 2022, when a fire broke out in an apartment building in Ürümqi, the capital of Xinjiang, killing ten people and injuring nine. According to the authority’s report, the deaths and injuries were caused by the inhalation of toxic fumes and a faulty power strip in one of the 15th-floor apartments that started the fire. The fire truck dispatched to the location ended up unreasonably far from the building, with videos circulating on social media showing its water falling short of the fire. Quickly, many people blamed zero-COVID policies for the deaths, alleging that road barriers prevented first responders from reaching the building. Ürümqi authorities placed the blame on the victims, saying that the fire escape doors were unlocked and the residents of the apartment building were allowed to go downstairs because they were in a low risk area. Social media posts claimed otherwise, with accounts of residents locked in, exits from the building restricted, and other mobility limitations that contributed to the lethality of the fire.

On the next day, 25 November, protests mobilized rapidly in solidarity across China and abroad, with crowds taking to the street in unprecedented numbers. Despite the massive scale and dispersion of the campaign, the protests shared a common action: protesters brandished blank sheets of paper. The campaign took its name as the A4 Revolution (a reference to the standard paper size for printers) or the White Paper Protests. The tactic simultaneously challenged and avoided censorship and forced authorities to choose between looking silly while arresting demonstrators for holding blank paper or simply allowing the protests to carry on. Furthermore, the Chinese government’s online censors used Artificial Intelligence techniques to systematically remove subversive imagery from the internet, but images of people holding blank paper confounded such technology and thus required the much slower work of human censors to deplatform the images.

On Wulumuqi Road in Shanghai, named after Ürümqi, local demonstrators held a candlelight vigil and protest. Police arrested demonstrators and maintained a presence there in the following days, as demonstrations continued across university campuses and cities, including Wuhan and Chengdu. While many protests involved challenges to government censorship and repression, the movement primarily focused on the immediate goal of ending the authorities’ harmful zero-COVID policies. Residents in multiple Chinese cities negotiated with local authorities, winning rollbacks of lockdown policies prior to their stated end date. Despite arrests and instances of police brutality, demonstrations continued unabated, often with chanting, singing, and public performances, like the tossing of white paper into traffic.

The massive scale of the protests meant that government authorities could not police them effectively. On 26 November, in the city of Lanzhou, protesters destroyed COVID-19 testing booths and tents, and on 30 November in Guangzhou, protesters threw debris as they clashed with police officers in hazmat suits bearing riot shields. By and large, however, most demonstrations were characterized by the nonviolent waving of white papers, mobile phone flashlights, chants, songs, and vigils. The united feeling of the moment, sparked by the fire in Ürümqi, created a wide sense of empowerment and new ability to speak out against the CCP.

After November, the demonstrations ebbed, partially because of police occupation of streets and protest sites, but also because of their mounting successes. Authorities lifted lockdowns in many districts in cities across China, and vice-premier Sun Chunlan declared that COVID-19 was weakening, a shift in rhetoric from previous messages about the necessity of severe restrictions. Finally, on 7 December 2022, the national government announced a broad rollback of zero-COVID policies, arguing that lower threats of outbreaks made the policies obsolete. The changes helped to revive the economy and small businesses, reduced surveillance, and expanded citizens’ mobility.

People soon celebrated on social media, with such comments as “I’m crying, I’ve waited for three years.” Nevertheless, the White Paper Movement continued to organize, turning its attention to broader protest against the CCP’s repression and authoritarianism, but its first campaign had certainly succeeded.