--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Maybe you've heard the Chinese people have been protesting. But maybe you didn't hear these are the biggest protests in China since Tiananmen Square over 30 years ago. And they're about COVID restrictions.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They spread all around the country, including to college campuses. And they really are by far the most widespread, unified show of defiance that the Communist Party has seen in at least three or four decades.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Most surprising of all, the protests might prove to be effective. They might force the Chinese government to back down.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's ahead on Today Explained.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained, Sean Rameswaram for I'm here with Josh Chin, Deputy China Bureau Chief at The Wall Street Journal, who's here to tell us about the, dare I say, historic protests in China.
--:-- Josh Chin: Thanks for having me on the show.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So these protests began actually in a really remote area of the country known as Xinjiang. It's in the far northwest, right on the border of kind of the doorstep of Central Asia.
--:-- Josh Chin: And they started because of a fire in a residential building there that ended up killing 10 people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thursday night just before 8pm local time and a blaze basically broke out on the 15th floor of this apartment building, apparently due to an electrical socket.
--:-- Josh Chin: And there's been questions since about whether or not residents were able to leave.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One of the reasons people died, at least one of the reasons residents suspect people died is that the fire trucks were obstructed by various zero COVID measures.
--:-- Josh Chin: The rescuers weren't able to get to the building to put out the fire in time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It took them roughly three hours.
--:-- Josh Chin: Videos show fire trucks unable to get close to the scene because the compound entrance was partially blocked.
--:-- Josh Chin: The video shows it's blocked with fences, tents, and metal barriers that are normally used as part of COVID measures.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The backstory to this is that Xinjiang as a region has been under COVID lockdown for more than 100 days.
--:-- Josh Chin: Restrictions have been in place there since August. They are some of the most draconian lockdowns in the country.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, people there, like people elsewhere in China, but more so are just run ragged by this experience, by living under lockdown.
--:-- Josh Chin: And this fire really catalyzed a sort of explosion of public anger in that city, and protests broke out there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Jemot! Jemot! Jemot! Jemot! Demonstrators apparently arguing with officials and chanting, lift the COVID lockdown, and trying to break through barriers too.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Then they started spreading around the country. Protests have erupted in Beijing, in Shanghai, in Wuhan, in Guangzhou.
--:-- Josh Chin: What's really interesting about this is that Xinjiang normally is a place that doesn't actually attract a lot of attention in China.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's a very locked down place even before COVID.
--:-- Josh Chin: The government there has been carrying out this massive sort of ethnic re-engineering campaign there against Uyghurs, the main sort of Turkic Muslim group that lives there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But I think in this case, because you have so many people in China living under lockdown or who have experienced lockdown in the past, where, you know, maybe their doors were locked on them from the outside or their buildings were obstructed.
--:-- Josh Chin: A lot of people in China could look at this fire and easily imagine themselves being trapped in a building without rescue.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because during the COVID zero policies, many Chinese people are living in hell.
--:-- Josh Chin: How does this tragedy lead to protest? How quickly does that happen?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, in this case, the fire happened on Thursday night, last Thursday.
--:-- Josh Chin: And the protests broke out the next day in Urumqi, in the city where they happened.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Extraordinary videos coming out of Xinjiang province, showing hundreds of people taking to the streets, protesting against this zero COVID chaos.
--:-- Josh Chin: You know, I mean, this does happen from time to time in China. You do have localized protests.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In fact, it happens all the time. People get angry with local governments and how they're handling things.
--:-- Josh Chin: And usually there's a little bit of tolerance for that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But in this instance, the protests didn't stay local. They spread around the country, which is actually a real nightmare scenario for the Chinese government.
--:-- Josh Chin: It's actually the one thing that they work the hardest to prevent is this sort of any kind of expression of nationwide, unified nationwide dissent.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How exactly does that happen? And how does this get to be the biggest protest movement in China since Tiananmen?
--:-- Josh Chin: Yeah, you know, I mean, it's really interesting in China, right? Because you just you assume it's this place is under such heavy control by the Communist Party.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's a massive censorship.
--:-- Josh Chin: And so it is, you know, looking at it from the outside, it is quite surprising that people were able to information was able to spread.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The one way that this did spread was I mean, it was on Chinese social media.
--:-- Josh Chin: It was able to take advantage of a sort of loophole or flaw in the Chinese censorship system, which is that there's always a bit of a lag between when some major event happens and when the censors are able to sort of figure out what people are saying and train the censorship algorithms to take it down.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I think that's what happened in this case.
--:-- Josh Chin: You had a lot of people posting images of the fire just on WeChat which is the super app in China that everybody uses and on other social media platforms.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The video shows smoke and flames coming from a high floor of the building but the water failing to actually reach the fire
--:-- Josh Chin: What adds to the tragedy is that those who died in the fire likely spent their last three months largely confined to that building, if not entirely.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It hit people with such emotional force that it spread like wildfire before sensors could really step in and stop it.
--:-- Josh Chin: Then over time, it kind of morphed into a much more overtly political and angry sort of event where eventually you even had a scene of people doing call and response where someone would say Xi Jinping and the rest of the crowd would say, step down, communist party, step down.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Which is, I have to say, someone who covered China, lived and worked there, you know, 15 years.
--:-- Josh Chin: I've never seen anything like that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And actually, on the ground, a colleague who was there in Beijing at one of the protests, and he did describe disagreements.
--:-- Josh Chin: Not everyone was willing or felt comfortable with calling for Xi Jinping to step down, but enough people did that you could hear them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You saw lots of images of Chinese protesters holding up pieces of paper.
--:-- Josh Chin: So yeah, that's really become, I think, the defining visual symbol for these protests.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it's really a, it's a statement of defiance against censorship, but it really has become this clever way of pushing back against censorship, right?
--:-- Josh Chin: Because you have, as a result of this, you have these images of police sort of snatching blank pieces of paper out of people's hands, which is just kind of absurd on its face.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that image, I think, has really captured the imaginations of a lot of people in China.
--:-- Josh Chin: I think everyone who lives in China, who has lived in China for any period of time, really feels sort of deep in their bones the frustration of censorship.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so people really responded to that image.
--:-- Josh Chin: The most powerful symbol of these protests has been a symbol that says literally nothing and everything at the same time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Exactly.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And how does Xi Jinping and his government respond?
--:-- Josh Chin: The first night, I think the police were just sort of stunned. They didn't know what to do.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So they were just kind of standing there not doing anything.
--:-- Josh Chin: But then on the second night, they were out in force.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They've been out in force ever since, kind of flooding the streets.
--:-- Josh Chin: Large numbers of police and personal protective equipment patrolling the streets with riot shields.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Barriers have gone up to stop crowds gathering again.
--:-- Josh Chin: Passers-by taking photos are being forced to delete them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Taking people to the side, demanding to hand over their cell phones, looking for apps that they might be using.
--:-- Josh Chin: They're also starting to track people down using their mobile phone data and data from apps that showed that they were at a protest site.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So we're starting to see the sort of retribution phase of the government's response roll out.
--:-- Josh Chin: At the same time, though, what is interesting is they have changed their tone on the COVID policy in China.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You had a health official in Beijing slyly, subtly acknowledge the protest.
--:-- Josh Chin: He talked about problems that the masses had reflected recently.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So that was the first acknowledgement of the protest by the government.
--:-- Josh Chin: And then they have also started talking about the symptoms of the Omicron variant as being less severe than previous variants, which is the first time they've actually said that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it looks pretty clear that they're trying to prepare people for a loosening of restrictions.
--:-- Josh Chin: But that's going to take some time because they've spent the last three years making people scared of the virus.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, sorry.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I laughed a little bit because it feels like that's been the narrative in this country for like 11 months at this point.
--:-- Josh Chin: But what you're saying here is that these protests will end up being successful and will end up moving the needle in one of the most repressive governments in the world.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, it certainly looks that way.
--:-- Josh Chin: And, you know, I don't think you'll ever have the Communist Party admit that it was doing this because of protests.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's just not in their DNA to be seen as responding to this sort of political expression.
--:-- Josh Chin: But you do definitely see them making some changes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the protests may end up having an effect.
--:-- Josh Chin: You know, it's not the effect that some people think.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think, you know, a lot of people see these images in Beijing and they think, oh, you know, this is the end of Xi Jinping.
--:-- Josh Chin: The Communist Party might fall.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't think we're anywhere near that.
--:-- Josh Chin: But in terms of nudging the Chinese Communist Party to rethink the way it does, it handles COVID, it does look like they could end up having some effect there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Josh returns when we do on Today Explained.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained, Sean Rameswaram for I'm here with Josh Chin from The Wall Street Journal the deputy China bureau chief over there also the author of the new book about China surveillance state Josh what I'm getting from you here is that despite living in a surveillance state, these protests found a path through.
--:-- Josh Chin: Yeah, that is absolutely one of the most noteworthy elements of this is that this is happening at a time when the Chinese government has unprecedented levels of control as a result of their use of technology.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think it says a couple things.
--:-- Josh Chin: You know, one, it's a really just amazingly powerful statement about the levels of frustration and also the bravery of protesters that they know that they're subject to the surveillance.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They know the government can know basically anything about them and is motivated to track them down.
--:-- Josh Chin: And yet they still came out and protested.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think that's just, you know, I keep thinking about the state of mind you have to be in to be living inside a surveillance state and still go to the streets.
--:-- Josh Chin: And then the second thing is just it does show that there are some flaws in the surveillance state.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's not a perfect surveillance state yet.
--:-- Josh Chin: It's still under construction.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so when people move quickly enough or with enough emotion or anger, outrage, it can actually overwhelm that system, at least for a period of time.
--:-- Josh Chin: I mean, you said that the government hasn't perfected its surveillance state yet.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Does that mean that they may use these protests as a test of their surveillance state and then make improvements?
--:-- Josh Chin: Yeah, I think so.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, I mean, it's sort of surveillance state in China borrows a lot from Silicon Valley.
--:-- Josh Chin: A lot of its techniques, a lot of its technology.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: No one does surveillance in a more sophisticated way than Google.
--:-- Josh Chin: The one that reads all of your emails and tries to sell you things based on what it knows about your behavior.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, and like Google, like any other Silicon Valley company, the Communist Party likes to iterate its systems, right?
--:-- Josh Chin: It's constantly updating them and training them to be better.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What's the origin story of the Chinese surveillance state?
--:-- Josh Chin: The origin of the surveillance state actually goes way back.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: All the way to the 50s, Mao Zedong, like a lot of other totalitarian leaders, had his own sort of domestic spying apparatus.
--:-- Josh Chin: But then on top of that, you had a Chinese scientist who actually was, in the 1950s, he'd been working in the U.S. most of his career.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He was a brilliant missile scientist by the name of Chen Shui-sen.
--:-- Josh Chin: He was chased back to China during the McCarthy era.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The FBI suspected him of being a communist, so he left.
--:-- Josh Chin: And he had all these ideas that he'd actually picked up in the U.S. about sort of new theories about the way that information could be used to exert control.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He initially used them as engineering projects.
--:-- Josh Chin: He helped build the Chinese missile system.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But later he started to apply them to society.
--:-- Josh Chin: Society.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And you have this theory that you could, if you could collect enough information and use the right tools, you could essentially engineer society the way you would like a guided missile.
--:-- Josh Chin: And these ideas kind of really captured the minds of some people in the Communist Party and kind of over time became more and more popular.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so now you actually have Xi Jinping, someone who's really embraced that idea.
--:-- Josh Chin: And just coincidentally, you know, with the way that AI technology has developed in the last decade, he now has the tools, the data and the sort of analytical tools to put those ideas into practice.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Early days in China, sort of before the arrival of the internet, obviously, you know, surveillance in China was kind of done by hand the old-fashioned ways or the same way that East Germans had pioneered.
--:-- Josh Chin: At its height in the 1980s, the Stasi had over 90,000 official employees backed up by several hundred thousand informants out of a population of just over 16 million.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The level of surveillance in East Germany was remarkably high and most citizens there were at some point or another on the receiving end of Stasi inquiries.
--:-- Josh Chin: You know, but China was really interesting in that the Communist Party grasped very early on the power of the internet and of information technologies.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so they started actually building the foundations of this current system in the early 2000s and actually with help from Western tech companies.
--:-- Josh Chin: You know, these companies like Cisco Systems.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Cisco Systems, empowering the internet generation.
--:-- Josh Chin: You had Nortel Networks, which is now defunct, but it was a major Canadian telecom company.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they all came to China and basically helped China build systems for sort of tracking and controlling the internet.
--:-- Josh Chin: And that was sort of the beginning of all of this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And, you know, over time, obviously China sort of built what is now by far the world's most sophisticated internet censorship.
--:-- Josh Chin: But it was also always sort of looking for ways to apply that level of digital tracking in the real world.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Starting in the 2010s, you had these major leaps in the evolution of AI that made AI sort of actually useful in the real world, right?
--:-- Josh Chin: So you now have, whereas before computers, you know, there were things like facial recognition, but it was really clunky, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it didn't work very well.
--:-- Josh Chin: And now you have computers and machines can identify someone in a crowd of 50,000 people in a matter of seconds.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If they have enough cameras around your neighborhood, they can trace your movements, where you've been walking over the past week or whatnot.
--:-- Josh Chin: So they have this just amazing ability to track people at a really granular level.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Already the authorities are using facial recognition to name and shame citizens, even for minor offenses like jaywalking.
--:-- Josh Chin: The first version of the surveillance state, the really sort of most complete version of it was built in Xinjiang, where all these protests started.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that was part of this campaign to track and analyze Uyghurs in the region who might pose a threat to the Communist Party, whose behavior sort of suggested future rebellion.
--:-- Josh Chin: And so, you know, they built this huge system for that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The authorities are using facial recognition cameras to scan people's faces before they enter markets.
--:-- Josh Chin: The system alerts authorities if targeted individuals stray 300 meters beyond their home.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it really, at the time, was the only place in the country where everyone was subject to surveillance.
--:-- Josh Chin: In other parts of the country, it was like certain groups of people, ex-cons, drug dealers, the mentally ill who were subject to that kind of surveillance.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And with the COVID pandemic, that changed.
--:-- Josh Chin: Suddenly, the government built these systems that were able to track the entire Chinese population in ways that were very similar to the way they tracked Uyghurs before.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But so they you know they were able to adapt their systems and expand them and they almost certainly doing that now with the protests
--:-- Josh Chin: And are North American companies still building the Chinese surveillance state infrastructure or has that become less fashionable?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, you've had a really interesting development recently, where for a long time they were.
--:-- Josh Chin: American companies were deeply involved in building the Chinese surveillance state.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They were at everything from the investment level all the way down to selling them the basic chips and hard drives that Chinese companies needed.
--:-- Josh Chin: But recently, I think starting under the Trump administration, actually, the U.S. policy towards China started to get more confrontational.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're having a little squabble with China because we've been treated very unfairly for many, many decades, for actually a long time.
--:-- Josh Chin: And at the same time, you had news about what was happening in Xinjiang to Uyghurs with the surveillance there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so you now have a really unique situation, I think, in the history of U.S.-China relations, at least since Tiananmen Square, where human rights concerns are a really major force in the relationship.
--:-- Josh Chin: So a lot of tech companies are pulling back or they're being forced to pull back from their partnerships with Chinese surveillance companies.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so they're no longer sort of directly building it the way that they had been in the past.
--:-- Josh Chin: What is the thinking behind this surveillance state, Josh? Is it surveillance for the sake of surveillance? Or is it surveillance out of fear? Surveillance for the sake of control?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think it's control.
--:-- Josh Chin: What's unique about the Chinese Communist Party is that it was, you know, it began as an underground movement, heavily persecuted and hunted in 20th century China.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And as a result of that, of being underground, of being a sort of guerrilla organization, it's always been very paranoid.
--:-- Josh Chin: And so it was constantly looking for systems that will allow it to identify threats, present or future.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Has Xi Jinping, in all his power and wisdom, been able to sell this to the Chinese people as a positive thing?
--:-- Josh Chin: You know, actually, he had done a really remarkable sales job up until very, very recently.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Before Omicron arrived in the sort of earlier phase of the pandemic, you know, after the Communist Party had rolled out this expanded surveillance state, I mean, we definitely talk to people who thought it was creepy and weird that, you know, suddenly government officials knew where they had traveled or who they'd been exposed to.
--:-- Josh Chin: But people were sitting in China, reading the news, seeing death counts in New York City and, you know, London go through the roof.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, they're looking around and they realized that China at the time, you could go outside, it was fine.
--:-- Josh Chin: You know, the hospitals weren't being flooded with COVID patients.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so they actually were happy with it.
--:-- Josh Chin: They sort of, they felt like whatever the inconvenience is, it was this life-saving system, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That was better than anyone else's, you know, the zero COVID approach was the right approach and the use of surveillance to maintain it was justified.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You're starting to see that really change now.
--:-- Josh Chin: And part of the issue is that Omicron just spreads too fast.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Even China's surveillance systems can't really keep up with.
--:-- Josh Chin: And so what they started, what the communist party started doing instead was using the technology to lock people inside their homes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so you had these really, these scenes in places like Shanghai, you know, this wealthy cities that had never really experienced the dark side of surveillance are suddenly locked in their homes and they're being, you know, they're being watched by like robot dogs and drones, right?
--:-- Josh Chin: I mean, just really kind of dark sci-fi kind of scenarios.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they are starting to feel what I think a lot of Uyghurs felt, I mean, are similar to something that Uyghurs felt in Xinjiang, which is the really sort of hard edge of Communist Party control.
--:-- Josh Chin: And that's gone on for some months now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think that's basically what these protests are about.
--:-- Josh Chin: People are fed up with the control.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But as you said earlier, the outcome here might be an easing of this zero COVID policy in China, an easing of restrictions like we've seen in countless other countries around the world.
--:-- Josh Chin: Do you think ultimately this will be a win for the Chinese surveillance state in that they, who knows, they tighten the infrastructure and make it stronger or a win for the people in China who realized their power?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That is the big question.
--:-- Josh Chin: And it's one I think it's really hard to answer, partly because we're just in uncharted territory.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What I would say is the surveillance state has the higher ground.
--:-- Josh Chin: And partly that's because, unlike in the United States with Occupy, right, or with protests other places, even in Russia, Chinese people have almost zero civil society to speak of because the Communist Party has just been systematically dismantling it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There are very few NGOs, for example, like nonprofit groups.
--:-- Josh Chin: There are very few robust religious communities, church communities, anything like that, you know, organizations outside the government that can help organize resistance.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: None of that exists in China on purpose.
--:-- Josh Chin: It doesn't exist.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so these protests are happening and they're kind of really raw.
--:-- Josh Chin: They're disorganized.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They're a little chaotic.
--:-- Josh Chin: I think that's to the advantage of the Communist Party.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's amazing that people did gather for these protests, but it's also extremely hard for them to keep them going, to sort of organize this into more of a movement.
--:-- Josh Chin: But what has happened, I think, in China, which is a problem for the Communist Party, is that there's been just an immense loss of political trust.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so the Communist Party can certainly crack down with the tools it's got.
--:-- Josh Chin: It can maintain control.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But it has to figure out now how to regain that trust.
--:-- Josh Chin: Otherwise, it's going to be in a scenario where it is constantly cracking down.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that may or not be sustainable long term.
--:-- Josh Chin: Josh Chen, Wall Street Journal.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He wrote a book with one of his colleagues all about China's surveillance state.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's called Surveillance State, Inside China's Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This episode of Today Explained was produced by Amanda Llewellyn.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was fact-checked by Laura Bullard and mixed by Paul Robert Bouncey.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thank you.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained is brought to you by Schwab.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: With award-winning service, low costs, and transparent advice, you can manage your wealth your way at Schwab.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Visit schwab.com to learn more.
