[CLIP] ‘Most Significant Protests Since 1989’—Benedict Rogers: Is China at a Turning Point?

These extraordinary scenes across China of the protests, which started with protests at the Foxconn Apple iPhone factory, then of course protests in response to the tragic fire in Urumqi, but they've now seemed to have turned into much more than that. Protesters are calling on Xi Jinping to step down, calling on the CCP to step down, calling for democracy and freedom. It looks to me as if these are the most significant protests since 1989. They are a boiling over of not just frustration at the very draconian COVID lockdowns, but actually rebellion against the very severe repression, the surveillance state that has developed under Xi Jinping over the last decade. It's very interesting. These lockdowns, they're an extreme form of social control. I think they're emblematic of a lot of what the different groups that you describe at length in China Nexus have been subjected to. Of course, much worse in most cases than these lockdowns, it just struck me that the broader part of the Chinese population has experienced this now. That's right. We've seen, as I describe in the China Nexus, the horrific persecution of the Uyghurs, which I believe is increasingly recognized not only by the United States government, but by many other parliaments and other entities as a genocide. We see the continuing atrocities in Tibet, the persecution of Falun Gong and forced organ harvesting, which certainly has been declared by an independent tribunal as crimes against humanity, the persecution of Christians, and of course the dismantling of Hong Kong's freedoms and autonomy in flagrant violation of an international treaty. So all of those things have been happening over recent years. In mainland China itself, we've seen increasing repression, crackdowns on lawyers, on bloggers, on dissidents, and on civil society. But now we see ordinary Chinese people themselves who are not politically active, who they themselves now are speaking up against the repression that they're experiencing as a result of the lockdowns. One of the things that struck me in all this is there's, of course, all these people in China who are sending out information, including some of our underground correspondents, sending out videos and photos and information through the Great Firewall of China, this amazing barrier to free information. One of the things that came out was that these protesters, all of their QR codes, they're supposed to have their COVID tests green. Well, all these protesters, suddenly their QR codes turned red. Now, that's interesting. Very interesting. Absolutely. It seems to me the most blatant illustration of the CCP's weaponization of COVID restrictions. Why don't you lay out for me how you think we got to this point? You laid out a few things that have happened, but I guess I want to understand the significance of them. One of them that you didn't mention, I had Feng Zhuozhuo on the show, or actually not on the show, but as part of the America's Future series, I did an interview with him on a live stream, and we were talking about the bridge man. He saw that as a very significant moment because somehow in this draconian, totalitarian police state, this guy figured out a way to protest for a while and get attention without being cleared away, one guy. So I'm just wondering if the people that are protesting now maybe didn't get some inspiration from that, or maybe some lessons. I think they may well have done. I think that was an extraordinary, courageous act right at the start of the 20th National People's Congress, which was going to and indeed did give Xi Jinping an unprecedented third term. And everything kind of looked good for Xi Jinping at that moment. He seemed destined to be in power potentially for the rest of his life if he chooses to. But now suddenly we're seeing protests against that, starting with bridge man, and now the protesters against COVID. And I think I've just written a piece for the Daily Telegraph in the United Kingdom about the protests. What I see as a breaking of the unspoken pact that had existed, or appeared to exist, between the people of China and the CCP in the past, where the unspoken deal was that the CCP would preside over an economic boom, living standards would rise dramatically, and that there would be, and we saw this in the 1990s and 2000s, and I described this in the book, there would be a degree of limited space for some level of freedom of expression, some level of civil society, some degree of religious practice. Of course, very restricted, and there were red lines and persecution. It hasn't just been happening under Xi Jinping, it's always happened under the CCP. But nevertheless, there was that deal where there was economic growth, there was a little bit of space for people. And in exchange, the CCP were able to claim some degree of legitimacy. And it appears that the people of China are increasingly recognizing that Xi Jinping has broken that pact because he's no longer pursuing economic policies that support private enterprise. He's reverting to a much more ideological rule. And I think the people are now beginning to realize that and to stand up. You mentioned earlier the obvious forced removal of Hu Jintao, the previous leader before Xi, from the room very publicly, I might add. Why did that happen in your mind? I've spoken to a number of people who know the CCP in greater depth than I do, and who observed that incident. Without exception, everyone agrees that it was not simply because Hu Jintao was unwell, as the CCP claims. It appears that either there was a lack of consultation between Xi Jinping and other factions in the party, including Hu Jintao's, or there was a consultation in which Xi Jinping either lied or broke his word. But either way, it appears that there was a clear disagreement over the choice of candidates for the central committee of the party. And the document that Hu Jintao was trying to get his hands on, and you see that in that footage, apparently was a list of those who had been decided to be members of the central committee, and they were not members of Hu's faction. And Xi Jinping and therefore had him removed before he had a chance to say anything.