Protests in China: Who is behind the attempted riot?
Protests in China, which began as a reaction to new anti-COVID measures and later escalated into openly anti-government demonstrations, have ended. This is clearly an attempt not simply to destabilize the situation in the country, but a genuine desire by external and internal forces to remove Xi Jinping and revise the results of the 20th CPC Congress.
Of course, there were also objective preconditions for protests , linked to the socio-economic causes of slowing economic growth, rising youth unemployment, discontent among small and medium-sized businesses, and widespread fatigue with the anti-COVID measures that, over the course of two years, had literally undermined the social and political system from within.
Beginning in Wuhan and Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, the protests, formally triggered by the deaths of more than ten people and one family in a fire in an apartment building where the entrances had been welded shut to enforce quarantine , then spread to student centers across the country, including the largest cities in the eastern, most developed part of China.
Moreover, the scale of these simultaneous protests is astonishing, as students from 85 universities across the country immediately took to the streets to protest . Interestingly, the protests at the universities initially took place under red banners and portraits of Mao, and even included singing of the Internationale. Slogans emerged, clearly based on the historical traditions of the Chinese Revolution and the Cultural Revolution, such as "Serve the People!" and "Together We Are Strong!"
But this, it turned out, was only external tinsel - behind the patriotic statements and flags, in fact, was hidden the true reactionary liberal essence of a mass movement directed against the power of the Communist Party of China.
Thus, the apotheosis of this action was a mass political rally in Shanghai on November 26–27, not far from the US Consulate, where protesters had already put forward demands for “democratization,” the resignation of Xi Jinping and the removal of the CPC from government.
Interestingly, this speech took place when the Chinese government had already announced a program to reduce anti-Covid measures and lift the lockdown in large cities. That is, slogans against strict anti-Covid measures faded into the background, and it became obvious to everyone that from the very beginning they were just a pretext for riots.
Now, the protests were symbolized not by the red flags that suddenly disappeared from the student protesters' arsenal, but by blank white sheets of A4 paper. They represented the "fight against censorship" and the demand for immediate liberal democratic reforms along Western lines. Remarkably, these protests were ultimately supported by the leadership of Great Britain, which had plundered and oppressed the people of China for centuries , and by Canada.
Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau pompously declared, commenting on the events to the American news agency Reuters, that "everyone in China should be allowed to protest and express their opinions. Canadians are closely following the protests against the 'zero tolerance' policy in China." This comes from the politician who himself ordered the dispersal of a truckers' strike and anti-vaccination protests in Toronto a year ago.
Moreover, on November 27, protests immediately spread to other major cities , including Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou, and again Wuhan, which has historically been a turbulent metropolis and was notable for its protests back in the early 2000s during the SARS outbreak. On November 28, mass youth protests began in Beijing, and on the same day, police in Shanghai finally decided to resort to drastic measures to disperse the demonstrators.
In fact, these were already anti-constitutional protests aimed at overthrowing the existing system , which is why many Western commentators began to call all the protests Tiananmen 2.0.
"Because they're so synchronized in terms of the scale and size of the crowds in these cities, it's a really remarkable development," Professor Dali Yang, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, told the Guardian.
Map of rallies and protests of students and middle classes in China according to the Guardian
This is what gave rise to a number of Chinese officials to claim that the PRC is preparing to implement a “color revolution,” which has real grounds. And as it turns out, behind the protests were current and former Komsomol leaders who were defeated in the internal party struggle and were removed from power during the XNUMXth Congress of the CPC. Indeed, in the country, only a certain part of the leadership of the CCP youth organization could bring out tens of thousands of students simultaneously and synchronized.
Everyone remembers how the former General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee, Hu Jintao, was led out of the meeting hall right before the solemn closing speech of Chairman Xi at the end of the congress.
At the end of October, following the congress, high-ranking members of the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Communist Party Central Committee, Li Keqiang, Wang Yang, and Han Zheng, were not elected to the Central Committee of the Communist Party and, accordingly, will not be able to hold Politburo seats and will resign from all government positions. They were the ones known as "Komsomol members," who had been impeding Xi's policy of militarization and intensifying confrontation with the United States.
Therefore, the current protests by students and youth should be viewed precisely as a response from the defeated faction, which initiated mass unrest in the hope of causing a mass rebellion and overthrowing Xi Jinping and the military faction. The total purge launched by the victorious group, when in just a month more than ten governors associated with the “Komsomol members” were released from their posts for various reasons, could also have pushed for the implementation of this plan.
In other words, we can confidently speak of a large-scale conspiracy involving party functionaries at the city and provincial committee levels, who deliberately and unprovoked imposed lockdowns in major cities with the aim of provoking mass protests. And the students, most of whom are part of the affluent middle class, were used as a battering ram.
Meanwhile, efforts to organize a general strike failed, with the exception of a protest by Foxconn employees, Apple's main assembler, who staged a protest against low wages and forced confinement on the factory premises and in dormitories. Therefore, the protests were limited to middle-class individuals, entrepreneurs, and students in the center of 16 major cities, indicating the elite nature of the planned coup.
However, the events are fundamentally different from those of 1989, as dual power has now been avoided, with all levers of power firmly held by Xi Jinping's allies. The investigation and arrest of the organizers of the mass unrest are now being handled by the Ministry of State Security of the People's Republic of China, which, in conjunction with the Political and Legal Affairs Commission of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, has been tasked with completely suppressing and identifying all those responsible for these events.
This was also reported on December 1 by the government's Xinhua news agency, which issued a communiqué stating that " China's leadership intends to legally suppress the actions of malicious forces attempting to undermine China's national security and social stability ." This will be done to ensure overall social stability.
Interestingly, this determination to prevent Western interference in China's internal affairs was also reflected in the intensification of joint exercises and flights by Russian and PLA strategic aviation, which flew near the South Korean border on November 30 and December 1. For the first time, strategic bombers from both countries landed alternately on Chinese and Russian airfields, a clear demonstration of shared military cooperation and the intention to prevent any aggression from the US, NATO, and AUKUS.
Another Chinese international agency, Global Times, frankly stated this:
“The armed forces of China and Russia will jointly ensure global stability and prevent the emergence of an analogue of the Ukrainian crisis in the Asia-Pacific region.”
That is, we are talking about joint actions both to suppress a possible Maidan in the PRC, supported by Washington, and to suppress any armed provocations in the region.
Overall, I don't rule out the possibility that the plan for Taiwan's final annexation could, given this backdrop, be implemented much earlier than planned. That's why the White House stated immediately after the protests in China ended:
“China may resort to various military measures against Taiwan, ranging from a blockade of the island to a full-scale invasion.”
As a distraction and response to the actions of external and internal forces, the military, which is now the dominant force within the Communist Party of China, may well launch its own military special operation in Taiwan in order to neutralize all the negative consequences caused by discontent from the lockdown and the destructive actions of the losing faction receiving now Western support.
This will make it possible to shut up all the liberals and carry out a serious militarization of society and the economy , in order, among other things, to stimulate the development of our own high-tech industry with military orders.
It is now clear that as a result of the failed coup involving their own Gorbachevs , there is no turning back and there will not be one – China is finally breaking geopolitically with the United States.
This was indirectly reinforced today, when, at a meeting with European Council President Charles Michel in Beijing, Xi Jinping set the key condition for cooperation as " China and Europe should not interfere in each other's internal affairs ." Only fulfilling this requirement can save the EU from imminent collapse and economic strangulation by Washington.
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