In November 2022, during the COVID- 19 lockdowns in China, a fire in a building located in Urumqi, Xinjiang killed ten people.  The building had been under lockdown for weeks, and the people who died weren’t able to get out of the building.  Chinese authorities insisted that residents of the building weren’t locked in their homes and that they could have gotten out.  However, the citizens of China reached their breaking point, and it has resulted in rare protests against the Chinese government.

Ever since COVID- 19 has been around, China has had some of the strictest COVID- 19 measures in the world.  Just a few detected cases led to buildings or cities being put into strict lockdowns, while most of the world has slowly been returning to pre-COVID life.  All the hard parts of the COVID- 19 pandemic stayed a part of life in China on-and-off for the last few years, like shortages of supplies, relying on food deliveries, and not being able to go to school or work. 

The protests took place in cities, including Shanghai and Beijing, and citizens demanded that the Chinese government change the COVID- 19 guidelines.  As a result of the protests, the Chinese government started to change some of the rules.  Instead of putting cities into lockdown, they only did it to districts instead.  They are also letting some people quarantine at home, instead of at quarantine camps.

However, the Chinese people wanted more.  Some protestors called for more freedom of speech, or even for Chinese president Xi Jinping to be removed from office.  Because protesting in China is both rare, as I wrote before, and risky, it has led to arrests.  Besides that, the protests in China are an act of rebellion.

During the protests, blank sheets of white paper became a symbol.  Why blank sheets of white paper?  Protests held them to symbolize the lack of freedom of speech, speaking with their actions instead of with words.  The blank white paper is acting as a symbol for all the things that the people cannot say.

Xi Jinping is one of the country’s most powerful leaders in decades.  He has been very tough on people not listening to him.  He even removed the two- term limit on the presidency so he could be the president for the third time.  Some people thought that the White Paper Protests would be a challenge for him, but however, he proved them wrong and now the protests have largely died out.