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Is Xi Jinping in trouble?
The Chinese people seem to have run out of patience with their country’s draconian Covid policies. After almost three years of brutal lockdowns, mass testing and sweeping quarantine, all facilitated by claustrophobic surveillance, they appear to have snapped. The protests that swept China at the weekend are the biggest challenge to Xi Jinping since he took power in 2012, and try as he might he cannot shift the blame. Zero Covid is his policy. Dissenting voices pointing to the economic and social cost have been silenced, and ‘defeating’ the virus and demonstrating the superiority of the Chinese Communist party over the floundering West is part of the cult of Xi.
The protests are particularly dangerous for Xi because of their geographical sweep – from Urumqi in the far west, to Guangzhou in the south, by way of Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan and many more towns and cities in between. But also because they seem to have brought together a rare coalition of anger that ranges from students and urban elites to factory and migrant workers, united by their suffering as a result of zero Covid. Xi appears to have underestimated the widespread frustration and anger.
The immediate trigger for the weekend’s protests appears to have been a deadly fire that killed ten people in a tower block in Urumqi last Thursday night. The area had been under lockdown since August and there were claims that harsh Covid measures had prevented residents from fleeing. The local authorities disputed that, but their denials were met with widespread scepticism on Chinese social media, where official claims are no longer trusted. It was only the latest of a series of grim stories of the collateral damage of zero Covid, including the death in Guizhou province in September of 27 people when their bus crashed while taking them to one of the giant quarantine facilities.
In Beijing, large crowds of peaceful protesters gathered on Sunday, some holding blank pieces of paper as a symbol of censorship, shouting for ‘freedom’. The blank paper protest was quickly dubbed the ‘A4 revolution’ and spread to Shanghai, where one of the city’s biggest paper manufacturers issued a bizarre statement denying rumours that it had ordered its A4 paper to be removed from the city’s stores. Students in both cities can be seen in videos demanding Xi’s resignation. Students at the elite Tsinghua University in Beijing sang songs and called for ‘democracy and the rule of law’. Some of the biggest crowds were reportedly in Wuhan, where thousands took to the streets of the city where the virus first emerged almost three years ago. Footage from the protests has not been fully verified, but whatever their form, it is clear that protests are sweeping across the country.
Earlier this month, the authorities announced a series of measures aimed at easing zero Covid controls in an effort to make them more focused and less intrusive. But with Covid cases surging, reaching the highest levels in China since the pandemic began, the timing was never good. A week after the announcement the promised changes rapidly unravelled. Draconian was back, and the broader impact was to sow more confusion and frustration.
Beijing and Shanghai were quiet this morning, though there was a heavy police presence in the areas where the protests took place. Police have reportedly been asking people for their phones to check if they have the Telegram app, which has been used by weekend protesters. They were also searching devices for virtual private networks (VPNs), the anti-censorship tools that are illegal for most people in China. Although China tightly controls the internet, and its censors have been busy deleting images, they have to a surprising extent been unable to prevent images of protests being widely shared in what has become an online game of cat and mouse.
The CCP’s default position on dissent is to crush it and to blame outsiders (usually foreigners) for instigating unrest. Repression has reached new heights under Xi. But the usual response will be complicated by the wide geographical spread of the protests, and the diverse groups they are bringing together. Police dragged away protesters in Beijing and Shanghai – at one point a BBC reporter was beaten and arrested, an incident described by foreign secretary James Cleverly as ‘deeply disturbing’. In Urumqi the authorities responded to protests by reopening some locked down neighbourhoods.
The biggest concern for the party – and for Xi – will be the way the anger has turned against them, and the danger of zero Covid frustrations merging with other grievances. For instance, students are facing grim job prospects, with urban youth unemployment running at close to 20 per cent. The old ‘contract’ whereby youngsters in effect traded economic opportunity for political docility no longer stands. Covid grievances in Urumqi, the capital of Xinxiang province, merge with wider anger over the repression of the Uyghurs, more than a million of whom have been sent to ‘re-education’ camps.
How the security forces react will no doubt depend on how things develop over the coming days. They can no doubt crush protests, but like zero Covid itself, attempts to stamp out such widely dispersed unrest by force risks becoming a giant game of Whack-A-Mole, where for every protest that is crushed another emerges in this vast and increasingly frustrated country.
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Will T.H.E.Y. succeed?
BOMBSHELL VIDEO: Klaus Schwab Says Chinese Lockdowns to Expand Worldwide
Alex Jones breaks down the clip of Klaus Schwab promoting Chinese-style lockdowns around the globe as citizens of the communist nation revolt against the dystopian regime for its censorship and medical tyranny.
The Infowars founder explains how the global elite are using China as the model for their One World technocratic dictatorship.
The modern American establishment has sold the nation out to the same interests promoting policies that will eventually turn the U.S. into a total slave state.
China Is A Slave State, No Gray Area – Names Of The Complicit Get Named – Ingraham On Tucker
"This is the single biggest threat to freedom and our own sovereignty independence in the world right now."
By Red Voice Media
November 30, 2022
“They’d sell out their mother for a buck.”
“This is the single biggest threat to freedom and our own sovereignty independence in the world right now.”
China Is A Slave State, No Gray Area – Names Of The Complicit Get Named – Ingraham On Tucker
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Might he burn in hell-fire for eternity?
Former CCP Leader Jiang Zemin, Responsible for Persecution of Falun Gong, Dies at Age 96
The Chinese regime under Jiang’s leadership made liberal use of extreme violence, constant propaganda, and brainwashing tactics in its bid to force Falun Gong practitioners to choose between their faith or their lives. Over the course of the persecution, millions of people have been imprisoned or held in labor camps, detention centers, insane asylums, drug rehabilitation facilities, or unofficial “black jails” for refusing to give up their beliefs.
Human rights groups have documented over 100 methods of torture used by the Chinese authorities to persecute Falun Gong, as well as the use of toxic, nerve-damaging substances. Many practitioners died, were maimed, or went insane as a result of this abuse.
Former Chinese Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin, who single-handedly launched one of the most brutal persecutions against a faith group in modern times, died at the age of 96, according to China’s state-run media.
Jiang, who was the communist regime’s top leader from 1993 to 2003, passed away owing to leukemia and multiple organ failure. He died at 12:13 p.m. local time in Shanghai, where he was once the city’s mayor.
His legacy stands as one of the worst human-rights abusers in history, responsible for countless deaths over his lead role in launching the persecution against Falun Gong in 1999.
Political Rise
Jiang was born on Aug. 17, 1926, in Yangzhou in the eastern coastal province of Zhejiang, a region northwest of the financial hub of Shanghai.
According to Jiang, he was adopted at the age of 13 by his uncle, a communist icon who was killed while fighting the Japanese army during World War II. While historians remain skeptical of Jiang’s claim, it’s clear he sought to distance himself from his father, Jiang Shijun. The elder Jiang was once a minister in the puppet government under Japanese occupation in the 1940s, a position that was regarded as traitorous.
According to his biography in People’s Daily, the CCP’s mouthpiece, Jiang joined the Party in 1946 while he was studying at Shanghai’s Jiaotong University.
In 1956, Jiang lived in Russia, working as a trainee at the Stalin Automobile Works, according to People’s Daily. However, there had been speculation that Jiang joined the KGB’s Far East Bureau while receiving training in Moscow.
He became the Shanghai mayor and deputy secretary of the Shanghai Communist Party Committee in 1985, and joined the Political Bureau of the Central Committee in 1987.
Jiang rose to power in 1989, shortly after the then-paramount leader Deng Xiaoping sent tanks and troops to crush pro-democracy student protesters gathering at Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
Only weeks after the mass murder, Jiang was promoted to general secretary of the Party, the regime’s leader, replacing Zhao Ziyang, who was sympathetic to the student demonstrators.
Many believe that Jiang, who was abruptly promoted as he was about to retire as Shanghai party chief at that time, benefited the most from the military action at the country’s political center, which killed an estimated 10,000 unarmed protesters.
In 1990, Jiang took charge of the regime’s military after Deng announced his resignation. Three years later, Jiang added the title of head of the state.
During his tenure, Jiang often touted his achievements, including bringing Hong Kong back from British rule in 1997 and enrolling the country into the World Trade Organization in 2001.
However, what Jiang never mentioned was the numerous Chinese dissidents who have been put behind bars. The suppression reached a new high in 1999, when Jiang launched the persecution of the spiritual practice Falun Gong.
The brutal political campaign also led Jiang to become the first Chinese leader to face lawsuits while in power. In 2009, Jiang and four high-ranking CCP officials were indicted for committing crimes of genocide and torture against Falun Gong at the national Spanish court.
In 2003, three Tibet support groups jointly filed a criminal lawsuit in Spain’s High Court, accusing Jiang and Li Peng, both of whom had retired as China’s president and parliament chief, respectively, of committing genocide and crimes against humanity in Tibet.
A Sweeping Persecution
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, consists of moral teachings based on the universal principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance, along with daily meditative exercises. Since its introduction in China in 1992, the practice surged in popularity, leading to an estimated 70 million to 100 million adherents in the country by the end of the decade.
On June 10, 1999, in anticipation of the anti-Falun Gong campaign, Jiang gave direct orders to establish an extra-legal Party organization for the purpose of coordinating and directing the coming repression via nationwide branches. Known as the 610 Office for the date of its creation on June 10, its structure and functions were comparable to that of the infamous Gestapo in Nazi Germany.
Jiang declared that he would eliminate Falun Gong within three months by targeting practitioners’ reputations, seizing their wealth, and attacking them physically. Practitioners murdered as a result of persecution were to be declared victims of suicide and cremated immediately, without identification. The Chinese regime mobilized all resources available to it—including the courts, propaganda departments, cultural and political institutions, and schools—in its effort to destroy Falun Gong.
State-run media—television, radio, newspapers, and later the internet—at all levels served the CCP to produce fake news slandering Falun Gong’s teachings, defaming its founder, and dehumanizing its adherents. The hate campaign manufactured many hoaxes, such as the “1,400 deaths” supposedly caused by practicing Falun Gong, the staged self-immolation at Tiananmen, and claims that Falun Gong was a threat to the Party orchestrated by overseas “anti-China forces.”
The CCP also extended its propaganda overseas to demonize Falun Gong and politicize the issue. Many international media outlets repeated the pejoratives and narratives crafted by the CCP to frame Falun Gong, effectively pushing the persecution to the global stage by priming audiences to misunderstand or feel hostility towards the practice.
The Chinese regime under Jiang’s leadership made liberal use of extreme violence, constant propaganda, and brainwashing tactics in its bid to force Falun Gong practitioners to choose between their faith or their lives. Over the course of the persecution, millions of people have been imprisoned or held in labor camps, detention centers, insane asylums, drug rehabilitation facilities, or unofficial “black jails” for refusing to give up their beliefs.
Human rights groups have documented over 100 methods of torture used by the Chinese authorities to persecute Falun Gong, as well as the use of toxic, nerve-damaging substances. Many practitioners died, were maimed, or went insane as a result of this abuse.
The number of deaths caused by the persecution is difficult to estimate, due to the difficulty of transmitting information out of mainland China. Minghui.org, a U.S.-based website founded by Falun Gong practitioners to document the persecution, has confirmed and verified the deaths of 4,828 people at the hands of the authorities for refusing to abandon their faith in Falun Gong.
However, experts believe the real number is likely to be vastly higher given that many deaths go unreported, or due to the victims having been murdered under conditions of utmost secrecy—such as for the harvesting of their organs.
Besides physical and psychological torture, the Communist Party under Jiang also imposed measures to shut Falun Gong out of public life. Adherents were fired from their jobs, expelled from school or college, or deprived of pensions and other welfare benefits. Relatives of practitioners have also endured great suffering, with the repression having broken up countless families.
Forced Organ Harvesting
In 2006, a woman from northeast China living in the United States became the first witness to speak out about organ harvesting, when she testified that her ex-husband had removed the corneas of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners since the early 2000s.
In the years since, the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG) and other independent researchers have conducted extensive investigations and verified organ harvesting allegations. One investigator called it a crime “never before seen on this planet.”
In 2016, investigators David Kilgour, David Matas, and Ethan Gutmann jointly published a 700-page report on forced organ harvesting in China. They estimated that Chinese hospitals performed 60,000 to 100,000 transplant surgeries on an annual basis, and that the chief source of donors was Falun Gong practitioners.
In 2019, an independent people’s tribunal consisting of a panel of lawyers and experts found, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the Chinese regime had for years, and continues to, harvest organs from living prisoners of conscience “on a significant scale,” and that Falun Gong practitioners were the main source of organ supply. The tribunal ruled that this amounted to crimes against humanity.
Lingering Political Influence
In 2002, Jiang transferred the title of party secretary to Hu Jintao, and the head of state a year later. But he maintained the position as the head of the Party’s Central Military Commission, overseeing the regime’s military until 2004.
Even after he gave up all his titles, Jiang continued to wield political influence from behind the scenes through his loyalists.
Many of Jiang’s allies, known as the “Shanghai Gang,” were still in the military, judiciary, security apparatus, and regional governments when Xi Jinping, the regime’s current leader, came into office in 2012.
Among them is Zhou Yongkang, a former member of the CCP’s Political Standing Committee and former head of the regime’s internal security apparatus.
In support of his patron Jiang, Zhou faithfully implemented the persecution of Falun Gong. Zhou, who was the Party leader in southwest China’s Sichuan Province, rewarded those in prisons and labor camps with financial rewards for actively torturing the faith group’s adherents, according to Minghui.org. Zhou was also likely to have a leading role in facilitating forced organ harvesting.
In 2015, Zhou was sentenced to life in prison for receiving bribes, abuse of power, leaking state secrets, among other charges. Zhou’s sentence was portrayed by China’s state-backed media as a victory in Xi’s anti-corruption campaign.
Jiang’s political influence has recently faded after many senior figures in Jiang’s faction, such as former Chongqing Party chief Bo Xilai and former deputy security minister Sun Lijun, have been detained and sentenced during Xi’s anti-corruption campaign.
Over the years Xi has tightened his grip over the Party, purging figures from Jiang’s camp. Xi firmly cemented his control at October’s 20th Party Congress, when he secured his third term in office and installed four of its allies into the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee, the Party’s inner sanctum.
Economic Devastation
The persecution of Falun Gong practitioners over the past two decades has consumed an enormous amount of financial, human, and societal resources while costing the Chinese state and people an incalculable fortune.
According to investigations by the WOIPFG, China spent an average of nearly one-quarter of its annual revenue to suppress Falun Gong during the peak years of the persecution. Another source indicated that the CCP mobilized resources equal to three-quarters of China’s GDP to maintain the persecution of Falun Gong. An official from China’s Ministry of Finance admitted that “the policy of suppressing Falun Gong was sustained by a generous amount of funding. Without this money, it would be impossible to sustain the crackdown.”
The Jiang clique mobilized millions of personnel to carry out the persecution. The salaries, bonus wages, overtime pay, and other benefits allotted to this group exceeded 100 billion yuan in annual expenditure.
Examples of other costs associated with suppressing Falun Gong include the use of financial rewards encouraging ordinary citizens to report practitioners to the authorities, the hiring of overseas agents and thugs to stalk and harass Falun Gong communities abroad, purchases of overseas Chinese-language media to defame Falun Gong, and foreign aid offered to developing countries in exchange for supporting China’s human rights record at the United Nations and in other international fora.