The Beginning of the End of the CCP: When Absolute Power Meets a Great Awakening
The 2022 Shanghai COVID Lockdown — Timeline, Political Undercurrents, and Legacy
This article kicks off a new series exploring why Trump’s tariff policy isn’t merely an “America First” economic stance—it’s a national security imperative. His tough stance on China reflects long-overdue strategic priorities, not just protectionism.
We’ll also expose a rarely discussed truth: inside China, resentment toward Xi Jinping runs far deeper than hostility toward Trump, despite Western media narratives. Xi has skillfully advanced elite capture across the Western academia, legacy media, global corporations, politics, and Big Tech including the AI emerging sector—weakening Western society core values and institutional structures, while consolidating power at home.
Most urgently, Americans must recognize the fragile reality inside China: the world’s second-largest economy is on the brink—not because of tariffs, but because the CCP’s own social engineering policies: it has never embraced a true market-driven system or lifted its own people. Instead, it built a top-heavy model of elite enrichment, powered by coerced labor, Belt and Road influence schemes, and inflated GDP figures—a fraudulent “Chinese miracle” meant to challenge the legitimacy of free market capitalism itself.
And when the CCP falls, it won’t just bring down the world’s most powerful dictatorship—it will shatter the corrupt financial backbone of Western leftist elites, whose true loyalty lies not with their own nations or people, but with the shadow wealth and ideological influence funneled through the CCP’s global propaganda network and money laundering apparatus.
Background
On May 11, 2021, during a pivotal Senate hearing, Senator Rand Paul directly confronted Dr. Anthony Fauci regarding his role in gain-of-function research, censorship surrounding the origins of COVID-19, and the scientific basis for continued support restrictions. Within 48 hours, the CDC issued a sudden policy reversal: fully vaccinated Americans could forgo indoor masks, signaling the beginning of a global shift toward reopening.
Western nations rapidly followed, dismantling mandates and restoring societal normalcy.
Yet in March 2022, China veered sharply backward just as the world moved beyond the pandemic. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) initiated an unprecedented full-city lockdown of Shanghai under the pretext of an Omicron surge, despite low mortality and high recovery rates.
Evidence soon suggested a different story. The Shanghai lockdown coincided with intensifying internal CCP power struggles ahead of Xi Jinping’s controversial third-term consolidation.
Since taking power in 2012, Xi Jinping has steered China toward economic self-reliance under the “dual circulation” strategy, expanded national security controls, and tightened Party dominance over both private and foreign enterprises. He sees globalization not as an opportunity, but as a threat—one that exposes the Chinese people to Western ideas, encourages the flight of talent and capital, and undermines the CCP’s internal grip on thought and control. Meanwhile, Xi’s administration engaged in a whole-of-state effort to become the world’s only superpower by any means necessary, including cyber intrusions and corrupting trusted insiders in Western societies (FBI News Release, July 2020).
Xi’s fundamental divergence created underlying political tension: The former CCP chairman, Jiang Zemin’s political faction — often called the "Shanghai Clique" — was deeply intertwined with coastal economic elites, multinational business interests, and an internationally connected People's Liberation Army (PLA) officer corps, especially concentrated around Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang provinces.
The PLA forces loyal to Jiang, particularly units based in the Shanghai military region (later reorganized but still influential), historically supported a more market-oriented and globally integrated vision for China's rise.
Ye Jianming, a fast-rising Chinese oil tycoon, ventured to places only the most politically connected Chinese companies dared to go. But what he wanted was access to the corridors of power in Washington — and he set out to get it.
…“This is a guy who courted and maintained networks with the People’s Liberation Army and took the strategy of ‘friends in high places,’” said Jude Blanchette, a senior adviser and China head at Crumpton Group, a business intelligence firm. “What becomes clear about Ye Jianming is that he is an incredibly adept navigator of politics.”
— New York Times, December 18, 2018
Thus, Xi’s moves toward economic decoupling and ideological tightening directly threaten the power base built by Jiang’s faction. The 2022 Shanghai lockdown is widely interpreted by independent observers as a deliberate blow to Jiang-aligned elites, weaponizing public health policy, crushing their economic stronghold, humiliating local leadership, and sending a brutal message that loyalty to Xi supersedes economic performance or global reputation.
Shanghai became ground zero for a disturbing display of regime survival tactics, leaving behind a legacy of trauma, distrust, and quiet resistance within China’s most globalized city.
Timeline of the Shanghai Lockdown (March–June 2022)
In late March 2022, Shanghai – a city of 26 million – was plunged into an unprecedented COVID lockdown that would last over two months. Officials initially announced a staggered lockdown: Pudong (east of the Huangpu River) would lock down on March 28 for mass testing, followed by Puxi (west side) on April 1. By April 5, authorities expanded the lockdown citywide, confining virtually all residents to their homes. What began as a targeted “static management” spiraled into a city in crisis, marked by severe food shortages, medical chaos, censorship, and grass-roots defiance.
By early April, human suffering was evident. Confined residents struggled to obtain necessities as the city’s normally sophisticated delivery logistics collapsed. With grocery stores shut and too few couriers, many went hungry or bartered with neighbors. Desperate scenes unfolded across apartment blocks: people leaning out of windows, yelling, “We have no food!” and posting pleas for medicine on social media (only to see them deleted).
Some neighborhoods resorted to group-buying groceries at exorbitant prices, while others waited for government supply packages that often arrived spoiled or not at all.
In one tragic case on March 23, an off-duty nurse suffered an asthma attack but was denied emergency care—her own hospital’s ER was closed for COVID disinfection. Her family drove her to another hospital, but she died that night. This death, officially acknowledged, became emblematic of the lockdown’s deadly “secondary disasters.” In the ensuing weeks, countless other non-COVID patients were left untreated. Public outrage grew as stories emerged of critically ill people unable to get ambulances, cancer patients missing chemo, and even a 3-year-old child who died from a gas leak when no one could respond.
By mid-April, Shanghai’s logistics paralysis and stringent protocols had turned deadly for many. City authorities mandated that anyone testing positive (even without symptoms) be hauled to centralized quarantine, leading to overwhelmed facilities and further disorder. Many residential compounds were sealed shut, sometimes with padlocks or fences, trapping even the healthy.
This “zero-COVID” zealotry created nightmarish scenarios: one apartment fire nearly turned catastrophic because exits were blocked (evoking memories of an even deadlier fire months later in Xinjiang). Food supply lines broke down so badly that “volunteer” teams of party cadres took over grocery distribution – yet videos showed them delivering rotten vegetables or leaving bulk food to rot. Citizen anger exploded in late April. In many high-rise communities, residents collectively shouted from their balconies in protest. Some banged pots and pans every night – a cacophony of frustration heard across silent city blocks. One viral clip showed an official van driving through a neighborhood broadcasting: “Your protest is being incited by foreign forces. Please cooperate and remain quiet!” – an allegation met with derision. Overhead, drones blared an infamous message: “Please comply with COVID restrictions. Control your soul’s desire for freedom. Do not open the window or sing.” The surreal instruction – literally telling people to suppress their yearning for freedom – became a meme and a rallying cry. Shanghai residents, known for their savvy and sarcasm, shared the drone’s words online until censors scrubbed them.
Throughout April and May, authorities struggled to provide basic necessities while tightening the lockdown. Censorship reached a fever pitch. On April 22, a six-minute montage called “Voices of April” circulated online, poignantly compiling real audio of residents crying for help and officials’ tone-deaf responses in those early weeks. It was a rare, unvarnished chronicle of the suffering and indignities people endured. The video spread like wildfire on WeChat before the government launched an “all-out censorship” campaign.
Leaked directives ordered online platforms to “clean up” any reposts, declaring “all videos related to ‘Voices of April’ are barred from reposting, without exception.” But netizens were not cowed – they fought back with extraordinary creativity.
Thus was born the “404 Movement,” named after the “404 – not found” errors that greet censored pages. Users reuploaded Voices of April hidden in plain sight: tucked inside innocuous cat videos, encoded as QR codes, layered over Batman movie posters with a “404” error as a title, or even reframed within “SpongeBob SquarePants” cartoon stills. In a modern samizdat, tech-savvy Shanghainese even used blockchain and overseas sites to preserve a crowd-sourced list of the deceased so that the truth could not be erased. For a brief moment, China’s tightly controlled internet became a whack-a-mole battlefield between censors and citizens determined to memorialize the human cost.
Meanwhile, grassroots resistance continued on the ground. Incidents of unrest flared in various districts, with enraged residents breaking through barricades or scuffling with hazmat-suited guards in some compounds. In one neighborhood, a lone man unfurled a banner reading “We want supplies, not lies” before being hustled away. Others employed humor or irony: a widely shared parody video showed residents sarcastically “thanking” the government for free rotten eggs. The mood oscillated between despair and defiance. As April turned to May with no end in sight, even normally apolitical citizens reached a breaking point. “We’ve been caged long enough!” became a common sentiment, and even Shanghai’s elites quietly fumed at the humiliation of their city. On May 5, in the prosperous Jingan district, scores of residents gathered at windows once more to sing “Do you hear the people sing?” from Les Misérables, only to be drowned out by official drones – an eerie scene of dystopian reality.
Facing mounting pressure, officials promised improvements. They vowed, “no one will go hungry,” and punished a few low-level cadres as scapegoats for the chaos. They also began censoring the censors’ failures: when a widely circulated video showed an old man mistakenly taken to a morgue in a body bag before staff discovered he was alive, it caused an uproar – posts about it were promptly wiped.
In mid-May, Shanghai claimed “social clearance” was within reach, yet paradoxically imposed even tighter curbs in some areas (dubbed “silent periods”) where no one could even step outside their door. This only deepened the humanitarian toll. Still, daily COVID cases gradually fell from their peak. By late May, the government, clearly eager to declare victory, announced the lockdown would “lift” on June 1. (Notably, officials avoided the word “lockdown,” insisting it was all just “static management” – an Orwellian twist.) On June 1, Shanghai re-opened its doors. Jubilant (and shell-shocked) citizens rushed out to take celebratory photos on the Bund and stocked up on food in case of another lockdown. After two months of trauma, China’s showcase city was free – at least in name.
Factional Struggles and Political Intrigue Behind the Lockdown
Throughout this Shanghai ordeal, internal Chinese Communist Party (CCP) power struggles simmered beneath the surface. Observers have speculated that the chaos in Shanghai was not merely a public health misstep but also a battlefield for rival political factions aiming to weaken President Xi Jinping ahead of the 20th Party Congress. Shanghai has long been a stronghold of a CCP faction associated with former leader Jiang Zemin, and some analysts mused that “Shanghai’s humiliation” was convenient for Xi’s enemies in the elite. The New Zurich Times bluntly noted that the lockdown’s “uncensored scenes of chaos” laid bare the insanity of autocratic overreach. Chinese-language commentators even likened the city’s plight to “killing 1,000 enemies at the cost of 10,000 of our own,” suggesting a widely accepted theory that the purpose of the zero-COVID campaign was to trap and eliminate Xi’s political enemies at the cost of innocent people.
Indeed, as Shanghai’s crisis deepened in April, rumors swirled of tensions between Beijing and local authorities. Initially, Shanghai’s leaders—most notably Party Secretary Li Qiang, a Xi protégé—had been reluctant to impose a full lockdown, given the economic stakes. However, once infections surged, Beijing’s edict was clear: zero-COVID must be enforced “at any cost.” One leaked directive from the central government ordered “unswerving adherence” to the policy, effectively overriding Shanghai’s more pragmatic approach. This one-size-fits-all imposition led Radio France Internationale to lament, “Poor old Shanghai – Beijing cut it down with one stroke,” implying the metropolis was sacrificed on the altar of Xi’s policy uniformity.
Some insiders quietly pointed to factional sabotage: Was the implementation made intentionally clumsy to embarrass Xi? While concrete evidence is scarce (given the opaque nature of CCP infighting), the timing was sensitive. Xi was months away from seeking an unprecedented third term in power, and any sign of policy failure could be politically costly. Throughout April, Xi doubled down publicly – urging “persistence in dynamic zero, unswervingly” – even as economic damage mounted. But in May 2022, an unusual phenomenon occurred: Premier Li Keqiang (died in 2023), traditionally sidelined by Xi, stepped into the spotlight with blunt warnings about the economy. Li convened an emergency meeting of over 100,000 officials nationwide on May 25, issuing a stark alarm that China’s economic pain in some areas was “even greater than in 2020.” He implored cadres to balance COVID controls with protecting growth, implicitly questioning the excesses of zero-COVID. Notably, when state media reported Li’s remarks, social media posts about it were mysteriously censored, hinting at political sensitivities. The censorship of the sitting Premier’s economic plea suggested high-level discord – Xi’s camp likely feared that open acknowledgment of the lockdown’s harm could fuel dissent (or be read as criticism of Xi’s signature policy).
Outside observers interpret these tea leaves as signs of factional maneuvering. Some view Li Keqiang’s high-profile intervention as a bid by the technocratic camp to reassert influence, essentially challenging Xi’s hardline approach. Others speculate that rival Party barons are content to let Xi “own” the Shanghai debacle. After all, by summer 2022, public confidence in zero-COVID was eroding, and whispers of discontent were reportedly growing even among Party elites and business leaders, who feared the policy was damaging China’s future.
Xi, however, proved adept at quashing internal dissent – at the CCP’s 20th Congress in October, he faced no open opposition and populated the leadership with loyalists, including Shanghai’s Li Qiang (rewarded with promotion despite the Shanghai fiasco). If there were conspiracies to undermine Xi via Shanghai’s troubles, they ultimately did not halt his consolidation of power. Nevertheless, the lockdown exposed rifts: it pitted hardliners against pragmatists and demonstrated the dangers of a policy driven by political loyalty rather than expert advice. Some officials privately expressed exasperation that “Beijing’s rigid orders” left them no flexibility to correct course. In essence, Shanghai 2022 became a cautionary tale of how factional politics and a cult of personality can override local governance, with disastrous results for the people.
The Hidden Death Toll: Casualties and Collateral Losses
From the outset, Chinese authorities insisted that Shanghai’s lockdown was “putting people’s lives first.” Yet the grim reality is that scores, possibly hundreds or more, of Shanghai residents died as a result of the lockdown itself, not the virus. A comprehensive accounting is impossible given CCP secrecy, but independent sources have documented many “collateral deaths”. These include verified cases, credible estimates, and numerous unconfirmed yet widely reported tragedies. It is crucial to distinguish these categories.
Verified cases – instances reported by reliable media or confirmed by family – began to surface almost immediately. Apart from the nurse who died after being refused at a closed ER, there was the case of an asthma patient in Pudong on March 30. According to a timeline published by his daughter, the elderly man suffered an attack and collapsed at home. COVID testers nearby tried to help and urged calling an ambulance. One ambulance went to the wrong address; a defibrillator arrived far too late. The family begged to drive him out, but the area was sealed – no one could leave. After an agonizing delay, the man died waiting for help. Similar stories played out across the city: on April 12, a top securities firm executive, Wei Guiguo, died of a cerebral hemorrhage at home after failing to get emergency services in time. In another case, a kidney failure patient couldn’t get his scheduled dialysis; by the time he was finally admitted to a hospital, it was too late – he passed away, a victim of bureaucratic rigidity. Under zero-COVID rules, hospitals often demanded recent PCR test results before admitting anyone, even in dire emergencies. Human Rights Watch noted that an “unknown number of people” died after being denied care for non-COVID conditions, owing to either hospital closures, staff shortages, or absurd protocols. These are not isolated anecdotes – they reflect a systemic breakdown of medical response. Even Shanghai’s own CDC experts later admitted many deaths went unrecorded in official COVID stats because they were officially “non-COVID.”
Beyond those who died from lack of medical care, mental health casualties soared. Cooped up in tiny apartments, some residents simply could not endure the interminable lockdown. Verified reports of suicide include a depressed young woman who leapt from a building on April 11 after running out of her prescription meds during the strict quarantine. In late April, local media quietly reported a rise in calls to suicide hotlines. While exact numbers are censored, community witnesses spoke of multiple jumpers. One especially harrowing video (circulated online before being scrubbed) showed a man on Shanghai’s Taixing Road standing on his balcony, screaming in anguish about starving before he jumped to his death as neighbors watched in horror. “Recently, people are jumping a lot – some from hunger, some from hopelessness,” a Shanghai resident told Radio Free Asia in May, calling these deaths “secondary disasters” the government refused to announce. Such testimonies, though anecdotal, laid bare a mental health crisis caused by the lockdown’s draconian conditions.
Estimated excess deaths: While China’s official COVID death toll in Shanghai was remarkably low (only 588 fatalities in the outbreak, by official count), the true human cost of the lockdown is far higher. One measure comes from the city’s funeral industry. In late April, Reuters reported an unusual spike in Shanghai’s overall mortality: funeral homes were handling roughly double their normal workload. “The number of deaths has doubled from a year ago, we are completely overworked,” one funeral director confided, suggesting a wave of uncounted deaths. If normal deaths were, say, a few hundred per day in a city this size, doubling that over the two-month lockdown implies thousands of extra fatalities – many likely due to inability to get timely care or the indirect effects of the shutdown. Epidemiologists noted that many lockdown victims would never appear in COVID statistics. Dr. Mai He, a U.S.-based pathologist, warned that people dying at home often “go unnoticed… That happened in Wuhan too,” and estimated that Shanghai’s true death count was “at least twice normal” during lockdown. In other words, for every official COVID death, another life may have been quietly lost to the policy itself. These estimates remain speculative but are supported by data anomalies (such as the surge in cremations) and the consensus of health experts that China was under-reporting.
Rumored figures circulating on social media and in exile communities paint an even grimmer picture. Some posts allege cover-ups of mass deaths in elderly care homes, claiming that facilities were overwhelmed by both COVID and neglect. In one unconfirmed account, a volunteer described finding several seniors deceased in their apartments after days of no contact. Other rumors spoke of people literally starving, though these were harder to verify. The “Shanghai’s Deceased” essay – a piece of samizdat that listed dozens of known death cases by date – was itself censored quickly. Netizens had to use blockchain links to share it beyond the firewall. While every entry on that list might not have been officially verified, the sheer number of entries (spanning from late March into May) gave a jarring sense of how many lives were quietly lost. The list included victims’ ages and causes (as reported by families): asthma attack, diabetic coma after insulin ran out, high fever untreated, suicide, and so on. Each line was a small epitaph of a policy failure. Even if some details were unverifiable, the pattern was unmistakable.
In sum, Shanghai’s lockdown likely caused hundreds of avoidable deaths, in stark contrast to the zero-COVID narrative of “saving lives.” Unsurprisingly, the CCP has never provided a full accounting. Officially, those non-COVID deaths simply don’t count. But to Shanghai residents, the human toll is seared in memory. From the elderly man whose last hours were spent begging for an ambulance, to the young professionals driven to despair, these victims are an indelible part of the true pandemic story. As one Chinese commentary bitterly observed, “In Shanghai, people weren’t killed by the virus – they were starved, denied medicine, or driven to jump.” The regime’s refusal to acknowledge these tragedies further undermined public trust (as we will examine below). Yet ordinary citizens have not forgotten; through underground archives and whispers on social media, they honor the memories of those who died in darkness during the spring of 2022.
A Rare Nationwide Resisting Movement Since 1989 Tian’an Men Square Massacres
The “404 Movement”: Digital Resistance in the Age of Censorship
During the Shanghai lockdown, a new form of protest emerged in China’s digital space. Dubbed the “404 Movement,” it was a spontaneous, decentralized campaign by citizens to preserve forbidden information and challenge the CCP’s ever-tightening censorship. (The term “404” references the HTTP error code for content not found – a sight all too familiar to Chinese netizens trying to access removed posts.) The spark for this movement was the censorship of “Voices of April,” the viral video that documented lockdown suffering. When the authorities rushed to scrub the video from every corner of the Chinese internet, thousands of Shanghai residents (and sympathizers nationwide) hurried just as hard to keep it alive.
This digital cat-and-mouse game in late April 2022 was unprecedented in scale. Netizens displayed incredible ingenuity: they embedded the video in PDF documents, innocuous-looking spreadsheet files, and even Minecraft save files. They re-posted it under code names and replaced its Chinese audio with foreign languages (knowing censors were slower to detect non-Chinese content). One group of coders transcribed the video’s audio into text and then into Morse code, sharing the dots and dashes on a GitHub repository. Another user created subtle illustrations of key scenes from the video so that the image could be shared instead of the footage. In one widely shared trick, someone hid the entire video inside a picture of Batman with an Internet “404 error” message plastered on it – a sly nod to what was happening. People would scan a QR code on the poster to access the video. Each time censors caught one method, a new variant emerged, as if mocking the futility of deletion. China Digital Times reported that at least 33 different permutations of the video were catalogued – from Klingon translations to mirrored footage – in what it called “Archiving The People’s Art.” The act of sharing the video became as important as the video itself: it was an expression of collective resistance, a statement that “We will not be silenced.”
The 404 Movement wasn’t limited to Voices of April. Emboldened netizens began preserving other sensitive content through creative means. Leaked government notices (like those censorship directives) were uploaded onto the internet via foreign platforms or as text hidden in image files. When posts listing the names of lockdown victims were deleted, tech-savvy users stored the lists on blockchain platforms (which are nearly impossible to censor due to decentralization). For a brief period, ordinary Chinese people – many experiencing political awakening amid Shanghai’s hardships – tasted the power of information rebellion. Slogans and satirical memes proliferated: images of blank WeChat screens became profile pictures (symbolizing all that was erased), and the phrase “404 Not Found” itself turned into a dark-humor meme about the government erasing truth. Some referred to this flurry of online dissent as “holding up a digital white paper,” a precursor to the later street protests where people held blank sheets. The idea was the same: saying everything by saying nothing. By posting an empty image or a single “404,” netizens signaled both a protest against censorship and mourning for those silenced.
Of course, the state’s censors eventually caught up. Within a few days, the Voices of April video was largely purged from Chinese sites, and even code words for it were banned. WeChat and Weibo engineers worked overtime to automatically block new variants. Accounts that persisted in sharing banned content were suspended or had their posts “disappeared” in real time. The Cyberspace Administration unleashed what many called a “stability maintenance” campaign online – throttling VPNs, mass-deleting chat groups discussing sensitive topics, and warning users that Big Brother was watching. Yet, despite this crackdown, an important precedent was set. The 404 Movement demonstrated a new ethos of digital dissent in China, one that would resurface later in the year: if you censor our words, we’ll use blanks; if you silence one platform, we’ll migrate to another. This tech-savvy, leaderless form of resistance was largely driven by young, educated Chinese – precisely the group most adept at evading censorship. And while it could not “defeat” the Great Firewall, it poked holes in the facade of total control. For the first time in years, Chinese netizens experienced a kind of guerrilla activism, finding community in shared frustration and creativity in constraint.
In Shanghai, even after Voices of April was gone from the Chinese web, people remembered its content: the wails of an infant separated from parents, the pleas of residents with no food, the sarcastic commentary of citizens filming empty streets. By ensuring these voices were heard (even if briefly), the 404 activists did what state media would not – they documented the truth. Their efforts also informed the outside world. Excerpts and screenshots from censored Chinese posts made it to Twitter and international media, undermining Beijing’s narrative that all was “under control.” In short, the 404 Movement kept a flicker of truth alive during the darkest days of the lockdown. It set the stage for the even bolder acts of defiance to come at year’s end, showing that beneath the surface of a censored society, a new generation was learning how to push back using the regime’s own tools and symbols in innovative ways.
The White Paper Protests: How Blank Pages Brought Down Zero-COVID
In November 2022, after many more months of rolling lockdowns across China, public frustration reached a breaking point. What began in Shanghai as murmurs of discontent earlier in the year erupted into nationwide protests that ultimately forced Beijing to abandon its zero-COVID policy. This extraordinary wave of demonstrations – later dubbed the “White Paper Movement” or “A4 Revolution” (for the blank A4-size paper protesters held) – marked the largest outpouring of anti-government sentiment in China since 1989. It was the White Paper Movement, and a detailed timeline reveals how quickly it grew and how decisively it pushed the Party into a corner.
November 24, 2022 – Tragedy in Ürümqi: In far-western Xinjiang, a deadly apartment fire claimed the lives of 10 people (official statistics, private estimated casualties exceeded 40) trapped in a building under COVID lockdown. Videos circulating on Chinese social media reportedly show fire trucks obstructed by locked gates and barricades, unable to promptly reach the victims.
The horrific possibility that zero-COVID measures had prevented residents from escaping and rescuers from saving them ignited public fury. That night, in the city of Ürümqi, distraught residents marched to government offices, demanding the lifting of the lockdown. Remarkably, they succeeded – Ürümqi authorities, sensing the anger, announced a gradual easing of restrictions. However, the spark had been lit well beyond Xinjiang.
November 26–27, 2022 – Protests Erupt Across Cities: News of the Ürümqi fire – and videos of the initial protest there – circulated nationwide (helped by VPN users and the lingering networks of the 404 Movement). On November 26, the first demonstrations began in other cities. In Shanghai that night, hundreds gathered at Wulumuqi Road – which tellingly shares the name of “Ürümqi” – for a candlelight vigil that transformed into something more. People brought flowers and signs memorializing the fire victims: “Urumqi, 11.24, Rest in Peace.”
However, the crowd (mostly young, many from Shanghai’s universities) soon began chanting slogans that startled even themselves. “Lift the lockdown for Xinjiang! Lift the lockdown for all of China!” they cried. Some brave souls went further, shouting “Down with the Chinese Communist Party! Down with Xi Jinping!”. In footage verified by AP, Guardian and others, those incendiary lines rang out clearly: “Xi Jinping, step down! CCP, step down!”. It was an astonishing scene – open calls for the toppling of China’s top leader in the streets of its biggest city. Police were caught off guard; they initially watched, then moved in with pepper spray and some arrests, but the crowd held its ground for hours.
By the next day, November 27, protests had spread. In Beijing, students at the elite Tsinghua University gathered on campus, holding blank sheets of paper and shouting for freedom of speech and an end to lockdowns. Hundreds of ordinary Beijing residents also attempted to assemble at various intersections—though under heavy police vigilance, they kept their tactics fluid. (In one case, protesters in Beijing debated whether to chant political slogans like in Shanghai; some feared harsh reprisals, given the proximity to central power, so they stuck to demands for lifting COVID curbs.) In Wuhan, the original epicenter of COVID, crowds broke down metal barriers and chanted “give us back our lives!”, a striking full-circle moment. In Chengdu, Chongqing, Nanjing, Guangzhou, and Xi’an, similar gatherings occurred—students and citizens singing the national anthem (which has lyrics about “arise, ye who refuse to be slaves”) and the socialist anthem “The Internationale,” repurposing them as protest songs. The unifying symbol across many locations became the blank white paper held aloft, wordlessly denouncing censorship and the absurdity of not even being allowed to voice discontent. A blank page said everything that could not be said openly.
November 28–29, 2022 – Climax and Crackdown: Shanghai saw protests on November 27 (into the early hours of the 28th) for a second straight night. This time, the police came better prepared – they flooded Wulumuqi Road with officers and even erected two-meter-high blue barricades along the sidewalks to prevent crowds from forming. Still, demonstrators regrouped elsewhere in the city. Many reported a cat-and-mouse dynamic: small clusters would form and chant, the police would rush in and disperse them, only for another flash mob to pop up a few blocks away. Authorities also began digital surveillance of protesters: officers were checking people’s phones on the street, looking for VPNs or apps like Telegram and Twitter, which had been used to coordinate and share protest information. In Beijing, a planned rally at the expansive People’s Square on November 28 was thwarted by a huge police presence – subway exits were closed, and anyone approaching was questioned and had their phone searched. Security forces, from local police to plainclothes agents, fanned out to preempt further gatherings.
By November 29, the state was moving decisively to smother the protests. Mass arrests had not occurred on the first night, but now they began quietly. Organizers or outspoken participants got knocks on their doors or phone calls warning them. Many who attended even briefly later reported police summoning them for “chat” – likely using cell tower data or facial recognition to identify them. Still, the message had been sent. Over those few days, an eruption of popular anger, with the white paper as its symbol, had shattered the aura of fear. The protesters’ key demand was clear: end the excessive COVID controls. And unlike past protests over local issues, these demonstrations had a unified national theme and even targeted Xi personally. The breadth of dissent, from cosmopolitan Shanghai to inland cities, from college campuses to factory workers (remember, just weeks prior, workers at the Foxconn iPhone factory in Zhengzhou had rioted over COVID restrictions and pay, another sign of brewing unrest), presented Beijing with a nightmare scenario.
The trigger for Zero-COVID’s collapse: Within days, the impact was undeniable – the government abruptly shifted course. On December 7, 2022, Beijing announced sweeping new guidelines that essentially dismantled the zero-COVID regime: compulsory citywide lockdowns were to be avoided, mass testing scaled back, and positive cases could quarantine at home instead of in camp-like facilities. It was as if three years of dogma evaporated overnight. State media and officials avoided saying they were responding to protests (they attributed it to a “new stage” of the virus), but the sequence of events was no coincidence. “Soon after the eruption of the White Paper protests, Xi Jinping abruptly abandoned zero-COVID,” observes Asia Society’s analysis, calling it a likely concession by the Party to people’s demands – an extraordinary outcome created by the protestors. Indeed, nothing else had changed: vaccines hadn’t suddenly improved that week, the economy had been suffering for months, and Xi had just secured his third term in October with zero-COVID still in place. The White Paper Movement was the catalyzing shock. Within a week of the protests, cities across China lifted their remaining restrictions with bewildering speed. PCR testing booths that had been ubiquitous were dismantled. Health-code scanning requirements were dropped. By mid-December, China effectively let the virus run free – a dramatic U-turn that left citizens stunned.
Crucially, the White Paper protests showed the regime that public patience was over and that further repression could have unpredictable consequences. The specter of 1989 loomed in Party leaders’ minds – they did not want a Tiananmen-like escalation. So they opted for a tactical retreat on the policy front, even as they pursued and punished key protesters in the shadows. The White Paper Movement thus achieved what countless expert advisories and economic pleas could not: it compelled the CCP to reverse a flagship policy. One could argue, as many Chinese did privately, that Xi Jinping’s hand was forced by the people. A protester in Shanghai had told a reporter during the unrest, “We’re not just here for the fire victims. We’re here because we can’t live like this anymore.” That collective sentiment finally tipped the scales.
It’s important to note the White Paper Movement was largely leaderless and organic, and it dissipated as fast as it arose once zero-COVID measures were lifted. By early December, police and state security made sure no more street protests occurred – officers patrolled sites of previous rallies, and universities sent students home early for winter break to break up any organization. But the impact had been made. As one year-end analysis noted, “Not since Tiananmen Square in 1989 had the CCP been confronted with such an openly defiant challenge to its authority.” And in this case, the Party blinked first.
Public Trust Shattered: Lasting Impact on Society and Politics
The trauma of 2022 – from Shanghai’s lockdown to the White Paper protests – has left an indelible mark on the Chinese public’s trust in their government. For decades, the CCP has maintained an unwritten contract with citizens: economic growth and competent governance in exchange for political compliance. The zero-COVID saga severely undermined that contract. Many Chinese who previously viewed the government as paternal or at least efficient have become openly cynical, disillusioned, and even politically awakened. As one Foreign Affairs piece put it, an “epidemic of mistrust” is now coursing through Chinese society, a direct result of the regime’s abrupt U-turn and the lies that preceded it .
Firstly, public faith in the CCP’s competence took a heavy blow. Shanghai was China’s most cosmopolitan, well-run city – if it could descend into chaos and starvation under Beijing’s directives, who could be safe? Middle-class Shanghai residents, many of whom were once proud of China’s progress, were shocked to find themselves scrounging for cabbage and bartering for medicine as if in a war zone. A commentator in World Journal noted that the lockdown showed even affluent urban Chinese “that no matter how high your status, if the supreme leader is in a bad mood, you could be left to starve or be beaten for stepping outside” . This harsh realization – that everyone is vulnerable to the CCP’s caprice – has sown a lasting sense of insecurity. Even after life returned to “normal,” many Shanghai residents quietly began stockpiling food and essentials, essentially preparing for the worst because they no longer trust the authorities to care for them in a crisis. The phrase “次生灾害” (secondary disaster) became a buzzword, and people use it now to question officials: will your cure be worse than the disease?
Secondly, the credibility of government information is at a low ebb. Throughout 2022, state media propaganda was in overdrive—praising zero-COVID as proof of Chinese superiority, downplaying the struggles, and outright falsifying death counts. Then, overnight in December, the narrative flipped: suddenly COVID was portrayed as “not so deadly” and the restrictions as overzealous. This whiplash did not go unnoticed. As an underground quip went, “Yesterday’s truth has a short shelf life in China.” People remember how, for months, officials insisted that ending zero-COVID would be a calamity—only to end it with no preparation and indeed cause a calamity of mass infections. The result is deepened skepticism: if tomorrow the state insists something, will anyone believe it? Even apolitical citizens now openly mock government statements in private. The blank paper held in protests symbolized not only censorship but a vacuum of trust—“we won’t believe your lies, we’ll speak our truth even if silently.”
Perhaps most significantly, the events of 2022 have led to a subtle but important shift in Chinese citizens’ mindsets about rights and governance. Many who had never protested or even considered politics found themselves drawn into collective action – whether banging pots, reposting a censored video, or hitting the streets with a blank page. This political awakening is hard to measure, but anecdotes abound. A young professional in Shanghai might have started 2022 proud of China’s low COVID toll and ended it chanting for freedom in a public square, his hands trembling but heart pounding with a new sense of empowerment. Students who held up blank papers later said it was the first time they realized “we actually have a voice.” This doesn’t mean China is on the verge of a democratic revolution – far from it – but it does mean the fear barrier has been cracked. Even though the government swiftly reasserted control after the White Paper Movement, the memory survives. Protest slogans like “我们不要核酸要自由！” (“We don’t want PCR tests, we want freedom!”) and “Give me liberty or give me death!” (which some demonstrators had the audacity to scribble on walls) became part of a new political lexicon. For a broad segment of the population – especially millennials and Gen-Z – the myth of a benevolent, infallible CCP was irrevocably shattered.
This disillusionment has reshaped China’s political future in subtle ways. While Xi Jinping secured his third term and faces no visible challenger, he rules over a populace that is far less trusting and more cynical. Lynette Ong, a political scientist, noted that this drastic COVID policy reversal was “highly uncharacteristic of the CCP” and that it has made the country “harder to govern” because people lost trust in the leadership’s consistency. People complied with zero-COVID largely because they believed in the necessity; once that was proven arbitrary, compliance in the future is not guaranteed. The next time the government demands sacrifice, they may meet much more skepticism or quiet resistance. Some Chinese have even taken steps to vote with their feet: a surge of emigration interest was reported in late 2022, with searches for “immigration” spiking on Baidu. Brain drain and capital flight could accelerate if the educated class loses hope in China’s direction. Domestically, the Party has responded to the trust deficit by doubling down on propaganda about how the COVID pivot was planned and a success – essentially trying to rewrite the narrative of 2022 – but many aren’t buying it.
Moreover, within the CCP itself, the handling of 2022 has prompted introspection, albeit behind closed doors. The zero-COVID debacle and ensuing protests showed how quickly public sentiment can shift from obedient to enraged. It highlighted the dangers of over-centralizing decision-making in one man, Xi, and silencing all criticism until it’s too late. Some cadres likely recognize that the Party’s long-term survival cannot rest on brute force alone; it needs a degree of public goodwill. Yet Xi’s response has been to emphasize control even more by tightening state security and surveillance to ensure “such incidents” (mass protests) do not recur. In the short term, this iron-fist approach may prevent organized dissent, but at the cost of further alienating the populace.
The legacy of 2022 might thus be a China where the surface is calm – no more loud protests – but underneath, the social contract is frayed. When people hold grudges in silence, it can be even more destabilizing for an authoritarian regime in the long run. Chinese social media has a long memory, and even as censors erase content, new code words and references keep the stories alive (for instance, netizens now refer to any brutally enforced policy as another “Ürümqi moment” or a community sealed as “Shanghai’s Lockdown”). Public trust in the CCP will not easily rebound. A survey of Chinese online sentiment after the reopening found a mix of relief and fury: relief that life was back to normal, fury that their suffering had been needless and their voices ignored until the very end.
In conclusion, the Shanghai lockdown of 2022 and its aftermath marked a pivotal chapter in China’s modern history. It exposed the human cost of authoritarian excess and ignited a spirit of resistance that, although quashed on the streets, persists in hearts and minds. The CCP’s brutal enforcement of zero-COVID, followed by its abrupt abandonment under public pressure, has created a populace that is more aware of its own power—and of the regime’s fallibility—than at any time in recent memory. China has entered a new era of guarded skepticism, where citizens will not soon forget the slogan on those blank sheets of paper: “We want freedom.” The Party now faces the challenge of governing a society that has seen the truth behind the propaganda and has learned, even if briefly, that collective action can bring about change. Whether this leads to further political reforms or a deeper crackdown remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: 2022 changed the relationship between the Chinese people and their government in a profound way, and its echoes will resound for years to come.
The Beginning of the End for the CCP: The Death of Deng Xiaoping’s Reforms and the Rise of Totalitarian China
Xi Jinping “accepted” his “reappointment” as the CCP General Secretary in October 2022. He purged rival factions and packed the Politburo Standing Committee with loyalists like Li Qiang, centralizing power under his "core leadership" ideology.
The consolidation coincided with the mysterious October 2023 death of former Premier Li Keqiang, a moderate economist sidelined by Xi, who suffered a sudden heart attack at 68.
While state media attributed it to natural causes, the delayed obituary, the censorship of online tributes, and Li’s prior coronary surgery fueled speculation about political pressures. Earlier, at the 2022 Party Congress, Xi’s predecessor Hu Jintao was abruptly escorted from the hall during a live broadcast—a symbolic purge underscoring Xi’s dominance. Video showed aides removing documents from Hu’s hands before his forced exit, while Xi ignored the commotion, cementing perceptions of authoritarian consolidation (CNN, Foreign Policy).
These events marked Xi’s eradication of dissent and total command over China’s political machinery, moving away from the reform and opening up policies launched by the late supreme leader Deng Xiaoping in 1979.
Additional Sources:
Cai, Xia. “The Weakness of Xi Jinping: How Hubris and Paranoia Threaten China’s Future.” Foreign Affairs, 2022.
Reuters (Stanway, David). “Shanghai death numbers raise questions over its COVID accounting.” April 28, 2022.
Reuters (Yew Lun Tian). “Shanghai COVID crisis puts political spotlight on key Xi ally.” May 9, 2022.
Reuters (Brenda Goh & Ryan Woo). “COVID-hit Shanghai to end two-month lockdown on June 1.” May 30, 2022.
Associated Press (Huizhong Wu). “Surprisingly low Shanghai COVID death count spurs questions.” April 2022.
Voice of America (VOA Chinese). “抗疫不力 基层顶罪，20大前习近平的‘大上海保卫战’” (Scapegoating the Grassroots for COVID Failures: Xi’s “Great Shanghai Defense” before the 20th Congress), May 11, 2022.
Radio Free Asia (Mandarin). “中国清零逼近终点？评论：‘白纸运动’随时再起” (Zero-COVID near its end? Commentary: “White Paper Movement” could restart anytime), Dec 8, 2022.
Asia Society (Policy Institute). “One Year on From ‘White Paper’ Protests, Disillusionment With China’s Government Persists.” Dec 17, 2023.
I listened to the audio version of your article. Well done. I remember the ‘blank paper’ protests. The CCP fear that their citizens will be influenced by the U.S. system and freedoms. If they lose control over surveillance and censorship, they lose political control. Is this a good assumption?
An excellent article, thank you for sharing it! One question, though—why did you post it now?