The Loneliness of the ‘Bridge Man’ GenerationChina’s dissenters are isolated. But they are not as isolated as they once were.
Aaron Sarin
27 Nov 2022
I thought to myself that there are many Chinese who also want freedom and democracy. But where are you? Where can I find you? If we meet on the street, how can we recognize each other?
~“Kathy”, a Chinese student in LondonIt’s been a month since the Sitong Bridge Protest, and while many people within China have never heard of the “Bridge Man,” there are already signs of the popular revolution he wanted. The country’s Zero-COVID policy is approaching a breaking point. Riot squads and water cannons were deployed in Guangzhou after citizens forced their way out of lockdown, dismantled COVID control barriers, and tipped a police van onto its side—years of frustration giving way to delirium. There have been similar scenes of chaos in Zhengzhou, along with protests in Nanjing, Lanzhou, and Chongqing. The nation’s capital is newly locked down, and already public discontent is simmering there.
Ürümqi, meanwhile, has been under the heaviest restrictions for more than three months, and on November 24th, the residents of a high-rise building burned to death in a fire. For them, as for many Chinese over the past three years, lockdown meant being literally locked inside by the authorities. And despite the fact that the Party is attempting to suppress the news of this tragedy, everyone I speak to in China seems to know all about it. In Ürümqi, incensed crowds are defying restrictions to protest. From Chengdu in the West to Shanghai in the East, they are gathering to call for Xi to step down—an unprecedented escalation.
Many, of course, will wait patiently at home, trusting the authorities to do the right thing. But even the faith of model citizens like these is now being shaken. They have seen, on their television sets, a vivid glimpse of the world outside China. To their surprise, it looks nothing like the world they live in: a global football tournament with no mandatory masks, no social distancing, no exhausted queues outside testing stations, and no sign of the hazmat-wearing stormtroopers the Chinese call “Big Whites.” The contrast is jarring.
The longer the Zero-COVID policy persists, the heavier the strain on that central pillar of CCP indoctrination—“the Party and the people are one.” Life has become absurd for Chinese citizens; for many it has become tragic. They can’t hide forever from the fact that someone is inflicting this state of affairs on them, and even the most devout of believers will surely begin to doubt that it’s all just another American plot (a well-worn trope). For now, their rage is directed at a policy. But as the protests are quashed and the policy continues, it will seem more reasonable for them to direct that rage at the policymakers. We shall see.
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Source:
https://quillette.com/2022/11/27/the-loneliness-of-the-bridge-man-generation/
