Protests in China Are a Rebellion Against the Communist Regime’s Suppression: Rights Activist

A protester shouts during a protest for the victims of a deadly fire as well as a protest against China's harsh COVID-19 restrictions in Beijing on Nov. 28, 2022. (Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images)

British human rights activist Benedict Rogers said the wave of protests against Beijing’s “zero-COVID” policy that spread to at least 10 cities in China over the weekend is a manifestation of rebellion against the Chinese regime’s repression.

“They are, I think, a boiling over of not just frustration at the very draconian COVID lockdowns, but actually rebellion against the very severe repression, the surveillance state that has developed under Xi Jinping over the last decade,” Rogers said in an interview with Epoch TV’s “American Thought Leaders” program that will premiere on Dec. 3, 2022. He recently authored “The China Nexus: Thirty Years In and Around the Chinese Communist Party’s Tyranny.”

China has recently seen massive protests across the country against the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) strict COVID-19 regulations, triggered by growing angst from the prolonged lockdowns and further fueled by the deaths of 10 people in an apartment fire in Urumqi, the capital of China’s northwestern Xinjiang region. However, the Canadian-based organization Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project disputed the official death toll and claimed in a statement that 44 people died in the fire, which broke out on the eve of Nov. 24.

First responders could not reach those in the fire that burnt for around three hours due to COVID blockades, with witnesses saying that residents were locked down and trapped in the apartment building.

Benedict Rogers, co-founder of Hong Kong Watch, in Washington on Nov. 28, 2022. (Matthew Pearson/CPI Studios)

Rogers, co-founder and CEO of Hong Kong Watch group, noted that public discontent has turned into protests in the quest for democracy and freedom.

“So protesters are calling on Xi Jinping to step down, calling on the CCP to step down, calling for democracy and freedom,” he said.

“It looks to me as if these are the most significant protests since 1989,” he added.

According to the activist, the CCP had an unspoken deal with the Chinese people during the economic growth in China between 1990 and 2000.

“The CCP would preside over an economic boom, living standards would rise dramatically … there would be a degree of limited space for some level of freedom of expression, some level of civil society, some degree of religious practice, of course, very restricted and that were red lines and persecution,” he said.

“It hasn’t just been happening here under Xi Jinping; it’s always happened under the CCP.”

“It appears that the people of China are increasingly recognizing that Xi Jinping has broken that pact because he’s no longer pursuing economic policies that support private enterprise. He’s reverting to a much more ideological rule,” Rogers said.

Over the past three years, dozens of Chinese cities and regions have experienced prolonged lockdowns impacting hundreds of millions of citizens. This has resulted in widespread accounts of suffering, ranging from denial of access to health care and food supplies to deaths under strict quarantine conditions.

Support the Protesters

Rogers laid out how the West should respond to the evolving situation in China.

He suggested that the West show a clear message of support to the protesters and opposition to the Chinese regime.

“We need to try to get across the message to the people of China, to the protesters in China, that we stand with them and that we’re behind them,” he said.

Rogers noted that the CCP could spread its narrative “that this is a Western protest movement, stirred up by or instigated by Western intelligence agencies.”

“We must be clear that this is led by the people of China, but we support them,” he stressed.

“If there is a brutal crackdown on the protests, we need to be signaling to Beijing that [it] will carry very heavy consequences for them,” Rogers said.

“The more we refuse to hold China accountable for its crimes, and we refuse to ensure that there are any consequences for its crimes, the worse the situation will be and the greater threat to our own freedoms,” he said.

Dorothy Li, Eva Fu, and Sophia Lam contributed to this report.