![]() 26, a large crowd gathered on Urumqi Road in Shanghai to hold a vigil for the victims of the fire, holding up blank sheets of paper and chanting slogans. Many protesters were responding to a fatal lockdown fire in Xinjiang's regional capital Urumqi, in which the Uyghur victims were unable to escape as they had been locked into their homes. ![]() People gather for a vigil and hold white sheets of paper to protest COVID-19 restrictions, as they commemorate the Urumqi fire victims in Beijing, Nov. As videos of crowds holding up paper sheets and chanting slogans flooded the internet, Chinese-language social media posts dubbed the demonstrations in more than a dozen cities the “white paper revolution.” In the top-rated news story of 2022 ranked by Chinese social media users polled by Radio Free Asia, protesters used blank sheets of paper as a symbol of political opposition.īlank sheets of paper were held aloft by demonstrators in late November to signify their opposition to anti-virus lockdowns, censorship and restrictions on free speech. What happens next, now that a key Xi policy has been upended amid calls for his release from anti-lockdown protesters is hard to predict, analysts said. ![]() It ended the year engulfed in a nationwide wave of COVID-19 deaths and mass infections after a dramatic U-turn in which the authorities abandoned Xi's pet policy, lifting all quarantine requirements and travel bans in a bid to rescue the country's flagging economy. A momentous year of lockdowns, calls for Xi Jinping's resignation, economic stagnation, street protests and the lifting of the zero-COVID policy has left China's future looking much less predictable.Ĭhina started the year amid an ongoing program of rolling lockdowns, mass tracking of citizens and compulsory coronavirus testing and a concerted effort by Communist Party leader Xi Jinping to garner political support for an unprecedented third term in office, drawing comparisons in some quarters with late supreme leader Mao Zedong. ![]()
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