Protesters are using few or no words in public and online demonstrations to speak out against Beijing’s zero-Covid policies
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SINGAPORE—On China’s heavily censored social media, a new target has emerged for internet police: blank sheets of white paper.
Platforms are rushing to remove images of people holding up the empty pages after protesters made them a symbol to express their frustration at China’s zero-Covid policies. Over the weekend, amid one of the largest nationwide demonstrations that China has seen in decades, demonstrators used few or no words at all to protest Beijing’s strict pandemic policies, which show little sign of ending even as most of the rest of the world moves on. Across multiple major cities and university campuses, many protesters held up blank pages, causing some online observers to coin it the “white paper revolution.” A Chinese stationery company issued a denial after rumors spread that it would suspend the sale of such paper. 
Students at Tsinghua University in Beijing are using blank pages to protest in defiance of a new school policy. PHOTO: OBTAINED BY REUTERS/VIA REUTERS
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Such oversight comes amid growing unhappiness with the country’s zero-Covid policies, in which Chinese officials have sought to suppress new coronavirus cases with harsh and sudden lockdowns.
Searches for the term “white paper” on WeChat and Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, return videos of origami and art, instead of videos of Chinese protesters carrying blank sheets of paper. Weibo had been scrubbed clean of videos of such protests. A search for the term Wulumuqi Zhong Road in Shanghai, where some of the most fiery protests took place Sunday, found many of the posts still searchable were from official accounts run by state or party-linked media or government agencies. Most of the posts were several months or years old. The Wall Street Journal found one post on Monday afternoon that had been online for an hour that had evaded the censors: a user in Zhejiang had posted a photo of a box of A4 white printing paper, referring to a measurement of paper size commonly used outside the U.S., along with the caption: “I heard this item was recently sold out. #A4 #white paper #coronavirus #freedom.” |
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Within a few hours, the post had been removed.
Douyin’s owner Bytedance Ltd., which also owns TikTok, didn’t respond to questions. At Beijing’s Tsinghua University, one of China’s most prestigious universities, students began using blank pages as protest in defiance of a new university policy barring the printing of unverified content at university printing facilities, according to a letter alumni wrote to the university administration in support of the campus demonstrations. “We believe the opposition of our classmates is completely justified,” the letter said, bearing over 400 signatures. “Healthy public dialogue requires freedom of expression.” White paper was also used by protesters in Hong Kong to express discontent with the 2020 imposition of a sweeping National Security Law and by people in Russia opposing the war against Ukraine. |
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