Speaker 1: It's the Big Take from Bloomberg News and I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: I'm West Cansova today. Why are so many Chinese citizens
Speaker 1: so angry with their government? Those are protesters in central
Speaker 1: Beijing chanting we don't want lockdowns, we want freedom. If
Speaker 1: you're thinking to yourself, we've been talking a lot about
Speaker 1: China on this show lately, you're right, and we're doing
Speaker 1: it again today because, as is so often the case,
Speaker 1: what happens there reverberates around the world, and what's happening
Speaker 1: now is unhappy citizens are doing something you rarely see
Speaker 1: in China. They are taken to the streets in cities
Speaker 1: across the country to protest strict COVID lockdowns. To help
Speaker 1: sort out why this is happening and what to make
Speaker 1: of it, I'm joined by Senior Executive editor John lu
Speaker 1: He's in Beijing and he oversees Bloomberg's China coverage. John Luthi,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for talking to me today. My pleasure. West. John,
Speaker 1: you're in Beijing, Can you describe what is happening, why
Speaker 1: are people protesting, and what does it look like? So
Speaker 1: as you'll know, COVID zero has been in place for
Speaker 1: a long time here a lot of restrictions, a lot
Speaker 1: of people being locked down in their apartments, so not
Speaker 1: being able to leave their apartments for extended periods of time.
Speaker 1: That's obviously causes a lot of frustration. And it really
Speaker 1: boiled over when there was this fire in a room
Speaker 1: Chi the capital of Shinjoun that killed at least ten people,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people online we're saying that that
Speaker 1: deathcount was so high because the fire. I just couldn't
Speaker 1: get to the apartment building because of barriers having been
Speaker 1: put up because of COVID zero. And so Sunday night
Speaker 1: last weekend, there were these calls for protests around the country.
Speaker 1: Here in Beijing, there was sort of a map somebody
Speaker 1: looked like somebody screen grab Google Maps and then just
Speaker 1: wrote on it, you know, protest here. And so I
Speaker 1: went out there with some of our colleagues and other
Speaker 1: media other reporters here in Beijing, and at first there
Speaker 1: was very few people, mostly cops, and then around ten pm,
Speaker 1: just a woman on the bridge over by the Lama
Speaker 1: River in central Beijing just held up a piece of
Speaker 1: white paper which had been sort of the symbol of protests,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden just had people started to
Speaker 1: gather and pretty soon in about half an hour, there
Speaker 1: was maybe hundreds. At the peak, there was maybe about
Speaker 1: a thousand people here in Beijing holding up pieces of paper,
Speaker 1: channing slogans about wanting to end the COVID restrictions. The
Speaker 1: cops were out masked, but they generally let people be.
Speaker 1: It just kept going and go. It went on so
Speaker 1: long I ended up having to call it a night
Speaker 1: about one am and just went home. But I think
Speaker 1: it went well into the morning. And was there anything
Speaker 1: more than people protesting? Did it it all turned violent?
Speaker 1: Was there any confrontation between police and the protesters. There
Speaker 1: was a little bit of jostling. I would say there
Speaker 1: wasn't any you know. The police didn't come out and
Speaker 1: riot gear and try to clear the crowd or anything
Speaker 1: like that. At about midnight, they did try to ask
Speaker 1: everybody to leave. They kind of walked around saying go home,
Speaker 1: go home, it's late, everybody needs some rest. But after
Speaker 1: trying that and failing, they just sort of stopped stood,
Speaker 1: tried to make sure that people weren't in the middle
Speaker 1: of the street so the traffic could continue, but otherwise
Speaker 1: let people be. That is obviously change in the last
Speaker 1: couple of days. The last couple of days Monday night
Speaker 1: Tuesday night, we've seen a much more robust presence on
Speaker 1: the street when it comes to the police. The police
Speaker 1: are checking people's phones when they come, they're asking people
Speaker 1: what they're doing. There's much more pronounced attempt to stop
Speaker 1: people from gathering before the crowd gets too big. John,
Speaker 1: you said that these protests are in response to China's policy,
Speaker 1: the COVID zero policy. Can you describe exactly what COVID
Speaker 1: zero requires of people? I mean, I think the number
Speaker 1: one thing to understand about COVID zero is that it
Speaker 1: literally aims to get to zero, and what zero refers
Speaker 1: to has changed a little bit right now. Our best
Speaker 1: understanding is it means zero community spread, so zero infections
Speaker 1: outside of quarantine. And to get to that, you know,
Speaker 1: local governments literally have to lock people in their apartments.
Speaker 1: And what really upset people were local governments essentially chain
Speaker 1: using chains to chain doors posed. There have been some
Speaker 1: instances where local governments have bolted doors shut, and that
Speaker 1: obviously in a situation where there's a fire in an
Speaker 1: apartment building, that could be extremely dangerous. And so the
Speaker 1: shintail fires, I think really set off this what if
Speaker 1: that was me moment for a lot of people, and
Speaker 1: you had this really strong reaction across the country because
Speaker 1: of that. Of course, these COVID zero lockdowns are also
Speaker 1: coming amid a lot of other pressures that citizens in
Speaker 1: China are feeling. The economy has slowed a great deal.
Speaker 1: People are feeling that it's difficult to afford things. Um,
Speaker 1: how much of this is also an expression of larger discontents? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I think a lot of stuff is built
Speaker 1: up over the years. It's obviously been three years, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to deal with COVID. This year has been harder
Speaker 1: than most. I mean, part of the problem with China
Speaker 1: is the first year of the pandemic, the government, because
Speaker 1: of the variant that was going around not being as
Speaker 1: infectious as Amicron, they were able to get things really
Speaker 1: under control rather rapidly and to allow life to get
Speaker 1: back to something very close to normal, and so sort
Speaker 1: of the populations here didn't have to really deal with
Speaker 1: lockdowns and the virus all the way until Amicron really
Speaker 1: started to spread in two and since then, you know,
Speaker 1: people haven't been able to travel, businesses have been closed.
Speaker 1: If you're a small business, person, You've probably lost a
Speaker 1: lot of money this year, and as a result, people
Speaker 1: are not spending and that's loft on top of you know,
Speaker 1: over the last decade or so, the amount of space
Speaker 1: for the sense for public discourse has shrunk tremendously. If
Speaker 1: you look at social media and China, it's more sensor
Speaker 1: than it's ever been in the past. For instance, I
Speaker 1: actually signed up for Facebook in China back in the
Speaker 1: early two thousands, and so it was much more open
Speaker 1: ten fifteen years ago, and that's sort of shrieking of
Speaker 1: the space for word discussions really weighed on people as well,
Speaker 1: and that's something that JJ and Ping has really enforced
Speaker 1: in the time that he's been in power, a greater
Speaker 1: control social control over what people can see and what
Speaker 1: they can say. You know. Si Jun Ping has made
Speaker 1: it one of his key priorities is to straight the
Speaker 1: national security here in China, and when the Chinese government
Speaker 1: the Party looks at national security, they see foreign influence
Speaker 1: as a counter to that, as deteriorating that, undermining that,
Speaker 1: and as such they've really cracked down on social media,
Speaker 1: the ability of people to communicate, to organize. When I
Speaker 1: came to China in the early two thousand's there was
Speaker 1: much more of robust sort of civil society. There were
Speaker 1: human rights lawyers, there were people who would defend the
Speaker 1: poor if they got into trouble with the government. They
Speaker 1: would defend the farmers, you know, who were saying that
Speaker 1: their land was being taken away from them by the
Speaker 1: local governments. And when she came into power, he largely
Speaker 1: put it into that and the justification was that the
Speaker 1: country needed to be unified. The splits of society, the
Speaker 1: confrontations and society were undermining national security, and he's used
Speaker 1: that to really tighten the party's grip over how the
Speaker 1: country's run. One of the things you mentioned a little
Speaker 1: earlier was that the symbol of the protests has become
Speaker 1: this blank white sheet of paper. What is the significance
Speaker 1: of that? So that blank white cheet of paper, it
Speaker 1: was used quite a lot in Hong Kong during the
Speaker 1: protests there in the city. I think it symbolizes the
Speaker 1: fact that you know, whatever you say, ken it will
Speaker 1: be used against you. And so people are not saying
Speaker 1: anything by saying nothing, expressing a lot through that, you know,
Speaker 1: when is notable for its absence, I think is what
Speaker 1: people are trying to get across, and one of the
Speaker 1: protesters that we talked to out in Beijing was saying,
Speaker 1: you know, one of her main gripes was that the
Speaker 1: fire and shin jab that killed at least ten people,
Speaker 1: there were no Chinese media reports about it, but that
Speaker 1: that happened just a few weeks after we had the
Speaker 1: stampede and Soul during that Halloween weekend, and there were
Speaker 1: lots and lots of media reports in China about that stampede.
Speaker 1: Is she was just really upset about how that contrast
Speaker 1: between you know, when something bad happens overseas, there's lots
Speaker 1: of coverage of it here in China, but then when
Speaker 1: something like this happens here in China, the citizens don't
Speaker 1: know about it. It seems like it's being covered up,
Speaker 1: and so that actually upset a lot of people as well.
Speaker 1: What else did people tell you when you were speaking
Speaker 1: to them about why they were protesting. One of the
Speaker 1: things that kept coming up was just the amount of
Speaker 1: testing and the restrictions, and people just being tired of it,
Speaker 1: and people feeling like they didn't understand why the rest
Speaker 1: of the world seems to be moving on but the
Speaker 1: China could not and you know, part of this and
Speaker 1: some people raise this as you know, we have the
Speaker 1: World Cup going on at the moment, and if you
Speaker 1: turn on the World Cup, you can often see crowds
Speaker 1: of tens of thousands of people in a stadium, not
Speaker 1: wearing a mask and seemingly living a very normal, happy life,
Speaker 1: and that just was such a contrast to the situation
Speaker 1: we have at the moment here in China where the
Speaker 1: infections are spreading. They're hitting record numbers and it's resulting
Speaker 1: in lots of lockdowns and people not being able to
Speaker 1: go to school, not being able to go to work,
Speaker 1: stuck at home. It's just this frustration of fatigue that
Speaker 1: has built up over the years. Are people taking great risks?
Speaker 1: Are they in personal danger for going out in publicly
Speaker 1: protesting when there are so many surveillance methods that can
Speaker 1: identify them. They are certainly taking a substantial amount of
Speaker 1: risk to go out and protest. We've had reports in
Speaker 1: the past couple of days that the police have started
Speaker 1: calling people who were at the protests and that you know,
Speaker 1: without explicitly threatening, but you know, implicitly letting them know
Speaker 1: that they shouldn't go out again, and that they know
Speaker 1: who they are. Yes, I mean the ability of the
Speaker 1: state here to track people being by phones, being by
Speaker 1: facial recognition cameras, it's very high, and I think that
Speaker 1: surveillance ability has pros and conins. Obviously, normally Beijing is
Speaker 1: an extremely safe city. There's very little crime on the streets.
Speaker 1: People feel very safe as a result of that. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, if there were protests, if there
Speaker 1: was something that the populace opposed in terms of government policy,
Speaker 1: it can be used to suppress that as well. And
Speaker 1: so people are taking real risk when they go out.
Speaker 1: And you know, the crowds are large because protests of
Speaker 1: this sort are so rare in China that when you
Speaker 1: get a thousand people out, it stands out. It's substantial,
Speaker 1: it's unusual. But in the grand scheme of things, Beijing
Speaker 1: is home to somewhere between million people, so a thousand
Speaker 1: people out on a street quarter is not that large
Speaker 1: a slice of the population. More with John Lou when
Speaker 1: we come back, John, what are people actually asking the
Speaker 1: government to do and is the government responding to them?
Speaker 1: So the government is responding a little bit too. Part
Speaker 1: of the requests so the request range from on one end,
Speaker 1: you know, get rid of COVID zero period, so open up.
Speaker 1: We want to be just like the US or Europe,
Speaker 1: you know, we want everything to be open, people to
Speaker 1: be able to travel. And there are more specific requests,
Speaker 1: you know, things like don't make me get tested every day,
Speaker 1: or reopen the schools, or don't allow the local government
Speaker 1: official in my neighborhood to chain lock my door close
Speaker 1: because we have one infection in the building. And some
Speaker 1: of these more detailed, incremental things the government is responding to.
Speaker 1: And so, for example, testing requirements in Beijing, they just
Speaker 1: announced if you're not going out, if you're not going
Speaker 1: to work, not going to school, you don't have to
Speaker 1: get tested anymore. They've told all the local governments it
Speaker 1: is not allowed to use chains or bolts or any
Speaker 1: sort of that thing to lock people into their apartments
Speaker 1: or to lock buildings up. That's been clearly forbidden. They
Speaker 1: have started to signal to the populace that they are
Speaker 1: getting ready to roll back to exit COVID zero. We
Speaker 1: just had this announcement they're gonna make a major push
Speaker 1: to get those over eighty vaccinated. That's been a big roadblock.
Speaker 1: It's only those over eighty have gotten a booster, so
Speaker 1: a third shot, and so obviously that's the population that
Speaker 1: would be most at risk if there was an opening,
Speaker 1: and so getting them vaccinated will go a long way
Speaker 1: and paving the way to exiting COVID zero. And you've
Speaker 1: had government officials come out and talk about how they
Speaker 1: know how badly people are feeling the pain of COVID zero.
Speaker 1: They're trying to do what they can to make it better,
Speaker 1: So trying to take a more soft approach to these requests.
Speaker 1: But at the same time you do also have, I guess,
Speaker 1: in addition to the carrot, you have the stick, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, the cops are out in force on the
Speaker 1: streets at night, just in case there are protests. We
Speaker 1: had the top Communist Party Commission for Legal Affairs over
Speaker 1: a night saying that they are going to take strong
Speaker 1: measures against anyone who wants to cause disruption or to
Speaker 1: undermine the state. And so that obviously is an implicit
Speaker 1: threat to anyone who's thinking of protesting more. And so
Speaker 1: it's a nuanced approach that's both carrot and stick, and
Speaker 1: I guess that in some ways illustrates the problem that
Speaker 1: the Chinese government has, which is, on the one hand
Speaker 1: wanting to seem responsive and wanting to quell protests, but
Speaker 1: on any other hand, not seeming like they're giving into
Speaker 1: protests that they see as illegitimate. That's why I think
Speaker 1: the government does not want to make it seem like
Speaker 1: these protesters got out on the street and then we changed.
Speaker 1: Because of that, I think one concern is obviously prestige
Speaker 1: and what it makes the government look like. But I
Speaker 1: think the other concern is whether or not it feels
Speaker 1: more protests. If people think, you know, if I go
Speaker 1: out of the street, I get something immediately, it could
Speaker 1: encourage more people to go out in the street. But
Speaker 1: if you look back over the last decade or so,
Speaker 1: protests have largely resulted in the government changing the way
Speaker 1: they do things. So we saw that when it came
Speaker 1: to pollution. Pollution, and it was a huge problem. I
Speaker 1: think you'll remember stories about how bad the pollution in
Speaker 1: maas you was. It was so bad that they had
Speaker 1: to cancel flights, for example, and people protested, they got
Speaker 1: really upset, and the government then came in and started
Speaker 1: to slowly and surely change things. And now it is
Speaker 1: much better here in China in terms of pollution, and
Speaker 1: so at a local level. We've see that as well,
Speaker 1: where there have been disputes about land or other things,
Speaker 1: the government will slowly start to change. I think that
Speaker 1: adaptability is something that has become a hallmark of the
Speaker 1: Communist Party. But I don't think this regime would still
Speaker 1: be in place that would have been able to oversee
Speaker 1: such miraculous economic growth over the last couple of decades
Speaker 1: if it wasn't able to change and adjust the way
Speaker 1: it does things to better fit the situation of what
Speaker 1: people are asking for. One of the other problems of
Speaker 1: the COVID zero policy seems to be that despite it,
Speaker 1: cases are still rising, and if they then open up
Speaker 1: the country and loosen these restrictions very quickly, you could
Speaker 1: see an enormous rise in a number of cases. So
Speaker 1: that is the real danger, right. There's, obviously, from the
Speaker 1: protesters perspective, a real desire from people who, to be fair,
Speaker 1: are mostly young, healthy and not in the high risk population,
Speaker 1: who want the economy reopened because they need to work,
Speaker 1: they need to earn money, they need to pay their mortgage.
Speaker 1: But you have this other population that is older, that
Speaker 1: has maybe underlying conditions that are really at risk, and
Speaker 1: that you know, I think, honestly are quite fearful of
Speaker 1: what a reopening would bring for them. China has only
Speaker 1: had five thousand something deaths, and a large part of
Speaker 1: the reason why that death count has been so low
Speaker 1: is because of COVID zero and all these harsh lockdowns
Speaker 1: having kept infections in check. I think the government has
Speaker 1: to move though, because with an acron the new sub variants,
Speaker 1: they are just so transmissible that, you know, the playbook
Speaker 1: that the government has relied on doesn't really work as
Speaker 1: effectively as it needs to, and so you could have
Speaker 1: a situation the worst of both worlds, where you have
Speaker 1: lockdowns and yet as we've seen, you have lots of
Speaker 1: infections across the country. I think the danger here is
Speaker 1: some sort of messy unwind where the country starts to open,
Speaker 1: but it's not totally ready. Vaccination haven't gotten quite where
Speaker 1: they need to be, the number of ICU beds has
Speaker 1: not been increased to the level they need, and then
Speaker 1: you see the health care system really start to come
Speaker 1: under strain, you see death start about you know, then
Speaker 1: I think that would be real trouble for the government here.
Speaker 1: My conversation with John lou continues after the break John.
Speaker 1: We've seen not just protests, but in a few instances
Speaker 1: protesters actually calling for GJ and ping himself to step down.
Speaker 1: And that's a whole different level of protest. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think there is frustration, and I think some of it
Speaker 1: has been directed as She because he is obviously demand
Speaker 1: in charge. I think we saw that with the most
Speaker 1: recent Party Congress. He's definitely got all the lovers of
Speaker 1: power in his head. And you know, COVID zero has
Speaker 1: been something he has defended over and over and again.
Speaker 1: It's something that he's touted as showing that China is
Speaker 1: better in terms of its governments in the West. And
Speaker 1: so I think it's not surprising that the protesters would
Speaker 1: associate COVID zero with She. I think many people do that.
Speaker 1: Whether or not that is an actual thing that could happen,
Speaker 1: whether these protests could actually undermine She's grasp of power,
Speaker 1: I think it looks right now extremely unlikely. You know,
Speaker 1: we've just talked about the Party Congress where he essentially
Speaker 1: appointed allies to the Standing Committee. He it seems to
Speaker 1: be well entrenched in power, and when an unprecedented third
Speaker 1: term setting himself up possibly to rule for life, there
Speaker 1: does not appear to be a challenger on the horizon,
Speaker 1: and so it seems unlikely that these protesters will breathe
Speaker 1: any serious challenge, So she's grasp of power. That being said,
Speaker 1: I do think that she sees the need to change
Speaker 1: the way that COVID is dealt with here in China.
Speaker 1: You know, he himself has just been to the G twenty.
Speaker 1: He's been to a pack at the G twenty a
Speaker 1: pack he was out legally with his mask off. We've
Speaker 1: had a number of state visitors come to Beijing, the
Speaker 1: president of Cuba. We have the president of the European
Speaker 1: Commission about to come here at to Beijing as well.
Speaker 1: So I think definitely the leadership and she himself sees
Speaker 1: the need to reopen. They are trying to do it
Speaker 1: in a way that avoids that Bessie unwinding that we
Speaker 1: talked about. How do you see this ultimately playing out
Speaker 1: in Hong Kong? Of course, before the pandemic there were
Speaker 1: large and sometimes violent protests which the Chinese government cracked
Speaker 1: down on quite forcefully. Do you see the possibility that
Speaker 1: something like that could happen in China itself if the
Speaker 1: protests continue. I think if the protesters come out and
Speaker 1: get a force. The possibility of confrontation is high. I
Speaker 1: think that the likelihood that we will get more protests
Speaker 1: and large numbers is relatively low. I think it's low
Speaker 1: because the police are out in force. I think it's
Speaker 1: relatively low because they let people vent. Over the weekend.
Speaker 1: There were protests in Shahio Saturday, protests elsewhere around the country,
Speaker 1: including beij on Sunday. Those protesters were largely allowed to
Speaker 1: protest and to vent. They actually allowed a lot of
Speaker 1: videos of people protesting and having confrontations with local authorities
Speaker 1: over the weekend. They allowed those videos to stay up
Speaker 1: on social media, and they're reacting by making these tweaks
Speaker 1: when it comes to testing, when it comes to the
Speaker 1: way the lockdowns are executed, and so I think that
Speaker 1: combination suggest that we are unlikely to see large numbers
Speaker 1: of protesters out on the street again. But something else
Speaker 1: could happen. If there's another fire, if there's another tragedy,
Speaker 1: you could really see a spark that sets people off.
Speaker 1: And if that does happen, I think the chances for
Speaker 1: some sort of confrontation between the police and protesters is
Speaker 1: high because the police have sort of put their foot
Speaker 1: down to say enough is enough. I think they would
Speaker 1: feel they have to take a firm approach if they
Speaker 1: were to get that challenge. And John, I just had
Speaker 1: one last question for you. Given how difficult to position
Speaker 1: the country is in now with cases that are high
Speaker 1: despite lockdowns, how do you think China eventually does get
Speaker 1: on top of COVID in a way that other countries
Speaker 1: around the world have been able to do. I think
Speaker 1: it's really going to come down to vaccinations, the number
Speaker 1: of vaccinations for the elderly, especially once they get that
Speaker 1: to a certain level. I think I see you beds
Speaker 1: trying to has very few. I see you beds and
Speaker 1: its healthcare system. If there were a big uptick in
Speaker 1: serious cases of COVID, the health care system would come
Speaker 1: under a lot of trade. And so I think the
Speaker 1: authorities are going to be trying to get those two
Speaker 1: metrics up to where they feel more comfortable. And I
Speaker 1: think there will be a real thing and when they
Speaker 1: do reopenate, I think it will be bumpy. I think
Speaker 1: it's almost inevitable that there will be more deaths just
Speaker 1: because we have so many people, I mean one point
Speaker 1: four billion people here in China, a large number of
Speaker 1: those people are over sixty, over eighty. Many of those
Speaker 1: people have underlying conditions, and so it's almost inevitable that
Speaker 1: there will be more deaths. I think the question will
Speaker 1: be are they able to control that number it arranged
Speaker 1: that is not going to to one for some retrench
Speaker 1: with to return to lockdowns, and to not to spark
Speaker 1: some social upheaval as a result of it. John Luke,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for speaking with me today. Thank you
Speaker 1: pleasure to be here. You can read Bloomberg's extensive coverage
Speaker 1: of the protesting China at Bloomberg dot com. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to us here at The Big Take. To daily
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Speaker 1: by Leo Sidrin. I'm West Casova. Have a great weekend.