China Protestors Call for End to CCP Rule
by Gordon G. Chang • November 29, 2022 at 5:00 am
The CCP, as the Chinese Communist Party is informally known, has now lost hearts across the country.
China throughout the Communist period has witnessed demonstrations, but most of them are, as Burton noted, "highly localized" and "directed at malfeasance, corruption, and incompetence of lower level Communist functionaries."
Now, however, the anger is directed at the Party itself. In short, as evident from the spontaneous demonstrations of the weekend, the Chinese people have had enough of Xi Jinping and CCP rule. They recognize the fundamental fact that the Party's system does not work.
The Chinese people are not only angry over Xi Jinping's "dynamic Zero-COVID policy;" they are also troubled by a crumbling economy and the collapse of the all-important property sector. New-home prices in 70 cities, for instance, fell in October for the 14h-straight month. There have been abnormally few sales in recent months as the market is "frozen," with big spreads between what sellers demand and what buyers are willing to pay. These drops in prices and sales are of great concern because some 70% of Chinese household wealth is tied up in property. China's people, as a result, were not happy even before Thursday's fatal blaze.
Fomenting hatred of America, to save the Communist Party from popular unrest, would not be a big step for Xi.
Extraordinary protests quickly spread across China over the weekend, including major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, since a fire Thursday claimed a reported 10 lives in an apartment block in Urumqi, in the northwestern part of the country.
China's people were enraged by the regime's COVID controls, which had prevented firefighters from reaching the scene of the tragedy in time. "This is people past their breaking point," tweeted CNN's Selina Wang on Sunday.
Also on Sunday, the Telegraph's Simina Mistreanu reported on Twitter that a crowd numbering at least 100 began marching toward Tiananmen Square, in the heart of the Chinese capital. Police, however, stopped demonstrators after only a few blocks, at the Liangma River. "The fact that they intended to protest at Tiananmen," she wrote, "is wild."
