As the Chinese government celebrated the 80th anniversary of China’s victory in World War II and the country’s military might this week, criticism of the Chinese Communist Party’s human rights record is building.
For 50 minutes on August 29, large slogans projected on a building in Chongqing, one of China’s major cities, urged the Chinese people to “rise up against fascism” and “take back our own rights.” The cleverly executed feat was unprecedented —the activist had already fled China before remotely projecting the slogans — while the swift police response against his family was not. Yet the real significance lay in the continued willingness of fearless citizens to boldly and publicly criticize Chinese leader Xi Jinping and call for democratic reforms in the face of ever-growing government repression.
The current trend can be traced to a man known as Peng Lifa who hung large anti-Xi and pro-democracy banners on a bridge in heavily-secured Beijing ahead of the Chinese Party Congress in October 2022. “Bridge Man’s” act seems to have emboldened others in the wake of the government’s draconian Zero Covid policies, which for many in China recalled harsh and oppressive Communist Party decrees as happened during the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward.
Similar messages sprouted in cities across the country in the December 2022 White Paper protest and the banners of Fang Yirong in Hunan and Mei Shilin in Sichuan. Peng has reportedly been sentenced to nine years in prison, and Fang and Mei’s fates are unknown. But that has not deterred copycat protests. This August, a man held up an anti-Xi sign at a World War II site and another wrote one on his motorcycle. Slogans have also appeared on streetlights and at public toilets.
This week’s military pageantry in Beijing masks the underlying weakness of the Chinese Communist Party’s repressive policies: that after over 70 years in power, the Party should most fear its own people, simply for their acts of courage in their calls for human rights and democratic reform.