Finding the courage to criticise Covid-19 injustice in China

Amid China’s pandemic turmoil in 2022, many turned to platforms like WeChat to vent their frustration
As a Chinese living in the UK, I feel fortunate, and guilty, to have the freedom to speak out, relatively untouched by the strict censorship

Yue Parkinson

Published: 3:30am, 14 Jan 2023

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Until early 2022, I was content with writing in a “safe” way. My Chinese column was only critical of British politics, and my English book on China took a middle ground – which itself required some courage. Yet I decided to take a leap and speak up fully.

Most Chinese writers are only willing to politely give advice to the Chinese government, not criticise it. This is because in China, those who publicly criticise the government immediately sense that trouble is coming.

Strangely, there is no law or document outlining what Chinese people can and can’t talk about; it is up to us to guess and judge for ourselves. However, the clearest red line we have collectively drawn for ourselves is to keep silent on Chinese politics.

Article 35 of the constitution says: “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China have freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.”

Sadly, the Shanghai lockdown in April 2022 confirmed that all constitutional powers granted to the people can be taken away overnight, this time in the quest to achieve the government’s zero-Covid policy.

My decision to first speak out was triggered in January 2022 by the scandal of the woman found chained up in a hut in Xuzhou.

Chinese internet users flocked to social media to decry the treatment of the hitherto unknown woman of unknown origin, abducted or sold and subjected to decades of abuse, forced to give birth to eight children and kept chained up by the man who claimed to be her husband.

A worker in a protective suit looks out from a residential area under lockdown in Shanghai in May 2022. Photo: Reuters

She was eventually rescued following the relentlessness of angry Chinese netizens. Throughout the process, it seemed the priority of the authorities was not to save her, but to prevent people from knowing the truth. I find it incredible that a country which seems so prosperous, powerful and modern to the outside world would be unwilling or unable to protect a woman’s basic rights.

While my initial public outcry was with tens of millions of other Chinese, the next time I spoke up was when I joined my Shanghai friends on WeChat to draw attention to the suffering of residents following the city’s lockdown last April.

But WeChat controls began to escalate, and popular articles or videos being circulated on the platform were often deleted so quickly that people came to the conclusion that they must contain the truth. Meanwhile, state media extolled the greatness of the zero-Covid policy and the harmony of society.

But because WeChat is indispensable to people’s daily lives – used for everything from bill payments to grocery shopping – the number of people who would risk losing their account by speaking out has decreased dramatically. The Xinjiang fire caused another brief, sharp rise in December, but calm was soon restored.

03:59

Protests flare across China over zero-Covid, lockdowns after deadly Urumqi fire

China’s sudden and complete reopening on December 7 led to a rise in the number of elderly deaths, even though many were not counted as Covid fatalities, but there was no public outcry like that seen during the Shanghai lockdown. Even when my friends lost elderly relatives who had been infected with Covid-19, they did not dare say so explicitly on WeChat.

Meanwhile, I feel fortunate, and guilty, because I live in the safety of the UK. My WeChat account serves only as a self-publishing platform, and if it is shut down, I can buy a new phone number and open another account, without my daily life being affected.

China’s reopening: the impact of Beijing’s U-turn on zero-Covid

In June 2022, the Lau China Institute at King’s College London invited me to moderate at the launch of Dr Andrew Chubb’s policy paper “Rights protection: How the UK should respond to the People’s Republic of China’s overseas influence”. While chairing the discussion, I made a public admission: “I have been living in self-censorship of speech”.

I am very happy that I am out of that cage now. Wouldn’t it be a waste to live in a free country and not exercise my right to freedom of speech? At the same time, however, I worry that my family in China may pay for my new rights in the UK.

Yue Parkinson is a freelancer writer and bilingual author of China and the West: Unravelling 100 Years of Misunderstanding, and China’s Ukraine Dilemma: The Shaping of a New World Order