Why did Chinese people stop protesting?

Nope, they're still protesting. In fact, it's getting much more frequent and the government can't really do anything about it because these protests, first of all, are very small in scale, but they happen so frequently. And today, all the videos that I'm going to be showing you come from just October alone. And now, there's two reasons why you might think that protests have calmed down. One of them is the size of them have decreased. There's no major protest since the last one we really saw was the 2022 white paper protest. Subsequently, we also had other ones all over the country, but yeah, the size of them have decreased. And the second one is that the form of protesting has shifted dramatically, which we'll talk about in the second half. But just to give you a little bit of a hint, it has to do with something called lying flat or silently not doing what the government tells them to do. And this happens among youth a lot. But the videos are a big key, I guess, a demonstration of a lot of people in China are just not afraid to go out and do things anymore. And of course, we saw recently with the Halloween as well, people took costumes as a form of protesting as well. This video is from October 23rd. Workers at Hanjiang Steel Plant protested against the factory's failure to pay their social security for the last 10 years. This video is from October 30th. In Zhengzhou, Henan province, certain hospital had not paid salaries to its employees for eight months straight. Doctors surrounded the hospital officials' car at the gate and demanded that they be paid their salaries before they could leave. October 21st, protests against false advertising, reduced building standards, simplified configurations, and shoddy products. October 20th, protests against the continuous power outage in the community for more than 24 hours. October 22nd, migrant workers protested. Now, many of the rest of the protests are directed at real estate problems. October 23rd, homeowners of unfinished building of an Evergrande building collectively requested to see the mayor. October 17th, owners of Blue Focus project in Hanyang district of Wuhan protested against unfinished building. October 17th, same day, property owners of Shui Mu community in Shandong province protested against heating issues in their building. Before we continue, if you've been enjoying our content, make sure to subscribe to our channel if you haven't already, like this video, and comment below your thoughts on this topic. On October 16th, homeowners in Hebei province gathered to protest against the unfinished property development. During the protest, a conflict broke out between the owners and workers, and one homeowner was injured. This video is from October 24th, also in the province of Henan. Homeowners of a building protested again against the lack of heating in the community. October 18th, this is now in northeastern part of China. Workers protested against a construction company for their unpaid wages. October 21st, the owners of a building protested against poor quality in the building construction. Also on the same day, but this time in southern China, owners of one building again protested for unfinished home. And today, homeowners of an unfinished building in Nanking went down to the people's government, or their basically local government office, to demand against, you know, something to be done about this unfinished home project. And well, an official came and says, you better not be filming and spreading this all over the internet. Well, they didn't listen. They actually told the official, and he was like, what you're going to do about it? So they posted this internet to Twitter, and that's how we're able to spread the news for them. And new forms of protesting has sparked up in China. These are videos from October again, when people invented a tricolor raincloth cover as a form of protest. Now, it started with Maybach owners who were protesting their water leak in their car. So they basically covered it up with this tricolor raincloth. And then later on, they started to attract other protesters to do the same. A week later, homeowners of a building cover their roofs with tricolor cloth to protest water leaks in their apartment, Tofu Dreg Project. A week later after that, homeowners of another building, they held up these tricolored banners as a form of protest. Again, because of quality issues. In fact, protesting has never stopped in China. What it's been done over the years is they've censored the bigger ones. They've used the police to suppress those that are present at the protesting rally. And the smaller ones still happen. But what people realize is no matter what happens to you going out and doing all these physical actions, it doesn't change the final results. The government is not going to do anything for you. So what people resorted in doing is that instead of trying to use all your effort and energy to do that, let's just silently protest. But in my other video about why there's a kneeling culture in China, I talked about how a lot of people when they did these protests, they find that they're much worse now than they were before because now they lost their job or the government has blacklisted them. And then so they felt like there's no other option other than to kneel on the ground and start to plea for a way out. What a lot of people realized, they're much smarter than that, is that no matter what you do, you get on your knees, you bang your head on the floor, or you go out and protest, nothing really changes. So what a lot of people, especially young people, do is a silent form of protest called lying flat or you could call it just not giving contribution to society. And instead what they're doing is let's have less kids, let's work less hard, let's not do much for the company, let's not make much so that we don't pay enough taxes, let's not have a marriage, let's just kind of cruise by in life, let's not have investment into real estate, let's not really do anything that could help the economy. And what happens is if people do that and there's a lot of savings in the bank but not enough in the circulation, is that the Chinese economy collapsed. So part of the reason why it collapsed after zero COVID was because people stopped contributing. And when people don't contribute, you know, the government, you can't really do much about it, right? So fundamentally in their mind, something shifted. And of course, this has indirectly impacted some professions too, like college, right? So in this picture, there's college instructors in northern China protesting because they haven't been paid enough and they're demanding that the school give them more living expenses. And also because of a lack of real estate purchases, investments in China, the real estate sector has effectively been destroyed. So what happens is the price of homes have come down dramatically. What this has done is a lot of homeowners, they see their property value cut in half. And by the way, this has not hit bottom, you know, in terms of the price drops. But as of right now, a lot of people are really mad because the property they bought a few years ago for a certain amount of price is worth half of that now in like two years. For example, here, homeowners of Yunbo Riverside protested against the price cut of their property. And this is just in Wuhan alone. According to statistics from a blogger, homeowners of 10 property projects in Wuhan were defending their rights in October, aka protesting. Because again, homeowners are dissatisfied with the price cut. What I'm trying to highlight with these videos is that while we see a lot of this, not enough, nearly enough, majority of the people are protesting silently, right? That's also one of the main reasons why fundamentally, the CCP won't revive its economy because people have lost the interest, the confidence in the system. And so some decide to pick up arms, others decide to revolt silently, whatever the case may be. This is a trend, I would say, even a tsunami, if you want to make it more dramatic of what people are doing. And I think this is an unstoppable force in the upcoming years ahead of China. So let me know your thoughts in the comments about this topic. Do you agree with what I said and analyzed in this video? And let me know if you have any stories. Also like this video, subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. Also check out our merch at davidzhang.net for all the latest swag like this hat here that says Tofu Dregs Specialist. Alright, until next time, thanks for watching. Bye-bye.