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What happened to the man who led the chants against Xi Jinping?
The story of the Shanghai protester who shocked the world
Nov 29th 2022
By Eva Rammeloo
When Wang first lifted his arm he was nervous. Then he pumped his fist in the air and yelled, “Communist Party?” The crowd answered him: “Down with it!” Next, Wang shouted “Xi Jinping?” The crowd reacted more tentatively to the president’s name; a few looked round to see the bespectacled young man who had dared to shout it. But they answered: “Down with him!” Wang yelled Xi’s name three more times. Each time the crowd’s response was louder: “Down with him!”
Wang (a pseudonym) didn’t even know that he’d been waiting for this moment. Like most young Chinese out on the street in Shanghai, this was his first protest, aged 27. After completing his shift at a cocktail bar, it had been a quick bike ride to join the gathering. People were laying flowers and lighting candles. Many held up blank sheets of paper, a silent protest against
covid lockdowns, to represent all that they wanted to say but felt they couldn’t. “We don’t need to write anything,” one person said. “It’s a symbol of the people’s revolution.” (“Blank sheet of paper” and “white paper” were soon among the many terms censored online.)
“I feel that there is no point in living. This is a philosophical idea, but the feeling is caused by the Communist Party”
The vigil was being held for those who had died in an apartment-block fire days earlier in Xinjiang in western China. The Shanghai gathering was on Wulumuqi Lu – the street, Urumqi Road, which bore the name of the city where the fire occurred. There were rumours that the victims couldn’t be rescued because of
strict coronavirus measures: fire escapes were locked and the entrance was barricaded. At least ten people died.
Lit up by flashing traffic lights and the glow of mobile phones, the crowd in Shanghai shouted: “We don’t want to test any more, we want freedom!” At the south end of the street more than 100 people were chanting: “We are all Chinese!” I talked to Wang on the edge of the gathering – he still had his bicycle between his legs. He tried to explain to me that, though the covid lockdowns had made life impossible for his generation, the
protests flaring across China were about more than the pandemic.
“We want our basic human rights as citizens,” said Wang. “I’ve been feeling a strong sense of powerlessness lately, that there is no point in living. This is a philosophical idea, but the feeling is caused by the Communist Party.”
Just being a body in the crowd is brave. Mei (a pseudonym) kept her distance from the more agitated protesters on the Shanghai street. The 30-year-old marketing employee in a glitter jacket had been out with friends on Saturday night when she heard about the vigil: “I’ve never seen a real protest in China.”
The Chinese Communist Party portrays demonstrations in other countries as violent and chaotic, something no one would wish for. Any protests that do occur in China are normally dispersed quickly. But on Urumqi Road on Saturday hundreds of officers were lined up along the side of the street, watching (“the police are trying to be nice,” said Mei). When I asked one officer whether the protesters were right to call for change, he smiled and looked away. After a pause he looked back at me: “Mei banfa,” he said – there is nothing we can do.
“If my speech was useful, then I am one step closer to being an ideal Chinese”
Any demonstrations that are allowed to go ahead in China usually concern local issues, and are typically solved by firing a local scapegoat. But it’s hard to think of a scapegoat big enough to pin all of China’s zero-covid policy on. The protests are about more than just covid, anyway. Even before the pandemic the Communist Party had become more repressive. Now, reckons Mei, everyone knows “deep down” that something needs to change, “but they don’t know what it is exactly.”
Mei’s parents are government officials in north-east China; her grandfather supported Mao Zedong. The party has been with her all her life. “But sometimes you feel deep inside that something is off,” she said, bringing her hands to her belly. She reckons her grandfather feels it too: “We don’t talk about that kind of thing. But maybe this protest will have some influence on him,” she said. “Change doesn’t happen right away.”
The young bartender who led the chants against Xi Jinping knows what kind of change he wants. “We want our country to stop being a one-party dictatorship,” said Wang. At around 4am on Sunday he reached home, euphoric. “If my speech was useful, then I am one step closer to being an ideal Chinese,” he wrote in a message on social media.
“Sometimes you feel deep inside that something is off. Change doesn’t happen right away”
The feeling of satisfaction lingered the next afternoon as he served cocktails to customers on the tree-lined street. His mother sent him a message saying how proud of him she was. Then she warned him to be careful.
When police officers came into the bar later that day, Wang still felt like a proud Chinese citizen. The officers were less gentle than those who watched the demonstrations on Saturday night: they put Wang in handcuffs and shoved him into a van. There was no official paperwork for his arrest, a friend of Wang’s told me later that night. After three days, there is still no trace of the young man who stood up.■
Eva Rammeloo is a journalist in Shanghai
images: getty, ap, reuters, yomiuri shimbun
