Papers with the words "Refuse COVID terror" and "Not foreign forces but internal forces" are placed on the ground near protesters gathering at the University of Hong Kong on Nov. 29. The recent wave of protests against China's anti-virus restrictions was a ray of hope for some supporters of Hong Kong's own pro-democracy movement after local authorities stifled it using a national security law enacted in 2020, but not everyone agrees. Associated Press

Bertha Wang

Protest movements routinely bring symbols that help define their cause. Umbrellas serving as shields against pepper spray came to symbolize demonstrations in Hong Kong in 2014 and again in 2019 as citizens protested anti-democratic measures pushed by Beijing.

Earlier this year in Iran, women cutting off their hair emerged as a signature gesture for protests over the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman arrested by Iranian morality police for violating the country’s dress code for women.

Now in China, a simple blank sheet of paper has become the defining imagery for massive demonstrations against President Xi Jinping’s zero-tolerance approach to COVID-19.

The brave protests mark the most significant display of defiance against the country’s Communist Party regime since the deadly demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

At protests across the country, demonstrators have been holding aloft blank sheets of paper as a gesture against the Chinese government’s bids to censor or bury social media posts about the spread of dissent, and about the government’s role in an apartment building fire last week in the far western city of Urumqi. Protesters blame China’s stringent COVID-19 policies for the delay in putting out the fire, which killed 10 of the building’s residents.

Whether China’s COVID restrictions played a role in those deaths remains unclear. What is clear, however, is that Chinese citizens are fed up with outdated, draconian anti-COVID measures that are doing far more harm than good to China’s people and economy.

For America and much of the rest of the world, COVID-19 isn’t the suffocating crisis that it once was. On Thanksgiving, families feasted in homes across the United States, while fans packed into stadiums to savor the rite of football on Turkey Day. A hemisphere away in Qatar, the World Cup continues to captivate the globe with corner kicks and saves inside arenas filled with unmasked fans.

In China, citizens remain trapped in a pandemic limbo.

A third of China’s population was estimated to have been under partial or complete lockdowns in November, according to Nomura, a Japan-based global financial services firm.

Earlier this year, Shanghai, China’s financial capital, endured a two-month lockdown that took a devastating toll on residents’ mental health as well as on the city’s economic output. The situation was even worse in the far western province of Xinjiang, where Urumqi is located. Residents were barred from leaving their homes for as long as 100 days.

President Xi, who secured an unprecedented third term as China’s leader, is paying a stiff price for inflicting on his people a misguided approach toward COVID. The lockdowns were meant to eradicate the virus’s spread, but lockdowns work only as short-term measures to buy time for the development and distribution of effective vaccines. Xi opted to rely on China’s own vaccines, which have proved to be far less effective than Western versions. And many elderly Chinese in particular have worried about side effects and have not had at least two jabs of any vaccine at all.

As a result, Chinese citizens have been trapped in their homes for months — sometimes in buildings ringed by barricades — and COVID-19 cases have continued to surge.

The country’s economic outlook grows gloomier by the day. Unemployment among youth has hit 20%, profits at Chinese companies big and small have slumped, and China’s unlikely to hit its projections of 5.5% economic growth for 2022, The New York Times reported.

Xi finds himself boxed in by past mistakes. If he doubles down on stringent COVID restrictions, he risks the potential for demonstrations to metastasize into unrest of unmanageable proportions. If he relents to protesters’ demands to rescind lockdowns, China’s COVID problem could dramatically worsen.

So far, police have been measured in their response to demonstrations. Xi clearly realizes an overreaction by the government at this point could lead to an existential crisis for his regime.

But his blueprint for the restoration of calm must include an abandonment of his zero-COVID approach. To do that, he’ll have to cooperate with Western nations and allow more efficient COVID vaccines to come into the country. And Beijing will have to markedly step up vaccination outreach efforts, particularly to older Chinese.

Finally, Xi must allow his nation’s citizens to freely express their deep frustration about a pandemic policy that has made their lives miserable, imperiled their livelihoods, and derailed their nation’s economy. The Chinese populace is seething, and Xi must realize he only has himself to blame.