Beijing Bridge Demonstration Goes Global Ahead of Xi’s Big Meeting

Chinese authorities moved quickly on Thursday to squelch a small demonstration in Beijing criticizing Xi Jinping ahead of a critical Chinese Communist Party meeting, but they failed to do so before news of the protest spread on social media and across the world.

Photos and videos posted to social media show banners placed over a bridge in Beijing calling for the overthrow of Xi and an end to Beijing’s draconian zero-Covid policy. One of the banners called for a general strike to remove “dictator” Xi, according to a translation by the Great Translation Movement Twitter account. The other said “No PCR test, but food. No lockdown, but free. No lie, but dignity. No political revolution but reform. No dictator, but vote. No be slave but we the people.”

A senior Chinese official recently doubled down on the brutal zero-Covid policy, which has seen the imposition of random mass lockdowns across China.

Images showed onlookers below the site of the demonstration, Sitong Bridge in Beijing, taking pictures with their phones.

Shortly after news of the demonstration circulated online, several foreign outlets dispatched reporters to the scene. But by then, the banners had been taken down.

CNN’s Beijing bureau reported that by the time its reporters arrived that afternoon, “no protesters or banners could be seen” but that there was an unusually large security presence in the area and that “security personnel were also spotted patrolling every overpass” nearby. Reporters from the New York Times saw eight police cars near the bridge, in addition to plainclothes police officers; officers made the journalists delete pictures they took of the bridge.

One man was reportedly taken into custody at the scene, and the BBC reports that he may be a physicist from China’s Heilongjiang province.

Yet the rapid removal of the banners did not prevent word of the demonstration from spreading. The hashtag “I saw it” received 180,000 views on Weibo before it was banned by censors, according to the Guardian. A number of other images, posts, and hashtags related to the demonstration were also banned. Even the word Beijing was banned.

However tiny the protest was, it has attracted global attention because public displays of dissent are highly rare in China today.

The incident is also significant because Xi is almost certain to solidify his grip on the party, securing a third term as general secretary, during the party’s National Congress. Even ahead of that momentous occasion, which occurs every five years and begins on Sunday, the Chinese authorities have failed to prevent this small sign of dissent from making a splash.

The Sitong Bridge demonstration has inspired some students on American college campuses as well. Posters featuring the slogans on the banners appeared today at various universities, including those with active pro-Beijing student groups, such as George Washington University.

For now, there’s little reason to believe that this demonstration will spark a more widespread protest movement within China, but it clearly serves as an inspiration to the party’s detractors in the country and across the world.