China rocked by protests against ‘zero-Covid’ policies

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘China rocked by protests against ‘zero-Covid’ policies’

Marc Filippino
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Monday, November 28th, and this is your FT News Briefing.

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Protests in China pose the biggest challenge to the Communist Party since the Tiananmen Square demonstrations. Protests in Iran continue, but many workers and businesses are reluctant to join in. And the EU is struggling with another influx of refugees. I’m Marc Filippino and here’s the news you need to start your day.

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Protests in China’s largest city escalated yesterday. Police in Shanghai struggled to disperse large crowds who’d gathered in the streets to vent their anger at the government’s strict anti-Covid policies. Our correspondents call it the most brazen challenge to the Communist Party’s authority in decades. The FT’s Tom Hale says it started Saturday evening and it began as a vigil for victims of a fire. At the other end of the country, the far west city of Urumqi. And then it turned into a protest against zero-Covid policies.

Thomas Hale
Which were partly blamed for the deaths in this fire in Urumqi, because the perception online was that, the fact the city was locked down limited people’s ability to leave the building.

Marc Filippino
So this has morphed into broader protests around the country. Tom, what did you see in Shanghai?

Thomas Hale
It’s difficult to describe it as a protest. What I observed was more large groups of people, a large gathering of people, mostly standing quite quietly, observing the situation and more and more police officers arriving and more and more people arriving. For the several hours I was there, the situation escalated quite significantly. I wouldn’t say it was persistently violent at any point, but the tensions would occasionally bubble over and someone would be arrested or taken away by the police, and people would shout, “Release, release him, release him, release them.”

Marc Filippino
Now, you also reported on a simultaneous protest online involving blank pieces of paper. Can you talk a little bit more about that, Tom?

Thomas Hale
Yeah. So there’s been a social media trend in recent days where people have used the expression white paper, blank pieces of paper, which signifies censorship, the idea being that anything you wrote in that paper would be censored anyway on China’s heavily controlled social media platforms. So people at this site where I was at in Shanghai were taking out pieces of white paper, pinning them to trees. The police would rip them down. That would cause a massive escalation. At one point, several sheets of white paper fell from some tall building, and the crowd erupted into cheers.

Marc Filippino
So it sounds like these protests aren’t just about the super strict Covid policies. Sounds like they’re about broader political frustrations.

Thomas Hale
So a lot of what happened in Shanghai was related to pent up anger and frustration over a ten-week lockdown that occurred in this city in the spring. So that, I think, has had a very deep psychological impact across the country. And what we’re seeing now after these protests is people beginning to reject those rules. People are told that they are locked down in their compound or their building in other cities in China, Beijing, Shenzhen, we’ve heard as well, are marching to the gates of their compound and essentially overwhelming through their mere presence alone, are, well, are overwhelming the people on the gates to demand that the lockdown is lifted. So if that keeps happening, then the zero-Covid policy, which is currently one of the world’s most significant political events, it’s had a profound — and economic events — it’s had a profound effect on the Chinese economy. It’s looking for now like it may be much more difficult to enforce those kind of very strict policies, which ultimately depend on the consent of the people.

Marc Filippino
Tom Hale is the FT’s Shanghai correspondent.

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Iran has in recent weeks launched missile attacks at Kurdish opposition groups based in neighbouring Iraq. The reason? Tehran blames them for supporting the anti-government protests in Iran. These protests started in September after a young Iranian woman of Kurdish descent was arrested by Iranian police and died soon after. Our Tehran correspondent Najmeh Bozorgmehr has the latest on these historic protests.

Najmeh Bozorgmehr
The crackdown is more brutal in border provinces such as Kurdistan in the north-west, which is home to ethnic Kurds, as well as some Balochistan province in south-east where ethnic Balochs live. The regime is far tougher in those areas on fears of separatist movements rather than in major cities and other parts of the country.

Marc Filippino
Najmeh, you reported that many businesses and also many workers are still reluctant to join the protesters, who are mostly students and other young people that want more personal freedoms. What is stopping more people from joining it?

Najmeh Bozorgmehr
Life is already difficult for many people with an inflation of above 40 per cent and high unemployment. While a great number of Iranians sympathise with the protesters, they’re still not ready to pay the price for the causes of this movement. Many workers live on daily wages, and if they don’t earn money, their families and children may starve. Businesses have the same concern that many Iranians have now, that they have no idea what would happen next if the Islamic Republic is overthrown today. They have no image of what is on the other side of the fence, fearing their lives could worsen if the ruling system is overthrown.

Marc Filippino
And what is the government doing other than trying to hold back open protests?

Najmeh Bozorgmehr
The government has been increasing wages of workers and salaries of civil servants, clearly to keep them away from protesters. How long this can last is open to speculation. Let’s not forget that the Islamic Republic is also struggling with the toughest US sanctions and its capacity to splash money is limited.

Marc Filippino
Najmeh Bozorgmehr is the FT’s correspondent in Tehran.

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There’s a new surge of migrants coming into Europe. This year EU asylum applications are up 58 per cent. The FT’s Brussels bureau chief, Sam Fleming, says politicians aren’t on the same page when it comes to handling this. He joins me to talk more about it. Hey, Sam.

Sam Fleming
Hi there.

Marc Filippino
Sam, you’re in Brussels, which is the capital of the European Union. Can you tell me what you’re seeing there?

Sam Fleming
Yeah, sure. Especially around the government buildings which deal with refugees and asylum seekers, you’re just seeing a lot of people either homeless or living in tents or lining up outside buildings and for overnight waiting for their opportunity to lodge a claim for asylum and then often not actually managing to get into the building. So campaigners are saying that the situation in terms of homelessness in Brussels is worse than it was even back in 2015, 2016.

Marc Filippino
Now, what’s behind this influx and where are the migrants coming from?

Sam Fleming
We’re talking in this particular context not about asylum seekers and refugees coming from Ukraine who are dealt with under a separate system. But we’re talking more about people who’ve come from the Middle East, from Afghanistan, from parts of Africa claiming asylum. The situation in other countries is partly, according to some authorities, to do with economic pressures, political pressures, which can vary from country to country. But also, it’s worth remembering that the relaxation of travel measures and restrictions on border crossings related to Covid, that has led to more people attempting to get into the EU.

Marc Filippino
How are EU states coping with all the arrivals? In your story that you wrote about this, you cite Germany and Belgium, in particular, are having a tough time here.

Sam Fleming
Yeah, I think it’s fair to say some have been more successful than others. If I focus, for example, on Belgium, there are a number of problems. First of all, a lack of shelter, inadequate housing. There are also political pressures within the Belgian government coalition. Not everyone wants to send positive signals when it comes to the availability of housing for refugees. There’s also existing pressures from the arrival of all the Ukrainian refugees, which many localities feel that in a sense they’ve dealt with a large refugee crisis already. They don’t really want to be setting up new facilities to house more people.

Marc Filippino
So, Sam, do you see this being a divisive political issue the way it was back in 2015 and 2016 during that refugee crisis?

Sam Fleming
Yes, I think there are signs that this is going to become an increasingly divisive issue in the EU once again. We already saw a stand-off between Italy and France over migrants quite recently with the, under the regime of the new rightwing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. But it goes back to a longstanding issue in the EU, which is there aren’t, in the view of many equitable processes to ensure that Member States fairly share the burden of arrivals of asylum seekers and migrants in their countries. And we still really in the middle of a debate, not towards the end of it, as to whether greater solidarity is possible between EU member states and when it comes to tackling migration.

Marc Filippino
Sam Fleming is the FT’s Brussels bureau chief. Thank you, Sam.

Sam Fleming
Thank you.

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Marc Filippino
You can read more on all of these stories at FT.com. This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Make sure you check back tomorrow for the latest business news.