WEBVTT - The Uprising Returns to China 0:00:05.400 --> 0:00:08.880 We live in an age of uprising. From Haiti to 0:00:08.960 --> 0:00:12.400 Hong Kong, from Ecuador de Sudan, from Chile to Myanmar, 0:00:13.119 --> 0:00:16.239 from the US to Iran, an entire generation has been 0:00:16.239 --> 0:00:19.279 confronted with the horror of our world and took the 0:00:19.320 --> 0:00:21.960 simple expedient of picking up a brick and throwing it 0:00:22.000 --> 0:00:26.040 at a cop. Yet as the uprising swept the globe, 0:00:26.320 --> 0:00:30.440 there was one country where it was considered impossible. Every expert, 0:00:30.560 --> 0:00:34.000 every policymaker, every kid on a street corner new there 0:00:34.080 --> 0:00:36.720 was simply no chance of a mass treet movement in China. 0:00:38.120 --> 0:00:42.800 On Monday, it was unimaginable. On Friday, it was everywhere 0:00:44.120 --> 0:00:48.680 welcome to it could happen here. What we've been watching 0:00:48.680 --> 0:00:50.839 for the past three weeks now is the failure of 0:00:50.880 --> 0:00:53.680 one of the most sophisticated political regimes in human history, 0:00:54.440 --> 0:00:58.120 a political, social, and economic regime designed specifically to stop 0:00:58.200 --> 0:01:02.160 this one moment. After thirty years of repression, the national 0:01:02.240 --> 0:01:05.360 mass street movement has returned to China. This is what 0:01:05.480 --> 0:01:09.000 it was all about. Everything from the censorship policies to 0:01:09.160 --> 0:01:13.520 union busting to subsidize mortgages from a rising Chinese middle class. 0:01:14.280 --> 0:01:16.399 It was about keeping people from going back to the 0:01:16.440 --> 0:01:20.200 streets to make even the idea of it impossible. And 0:01:20.319 --> 0:01:23.920 yet here we are. In one sense, the party is 0:01:24.000 --> 0:01:26.600 little to fear from the round of protests, barring an 0:01:26.600 --> 0:01:31.160 immense intensification of violence, which at the moment seems extremely unlikely. 0:01:32.160 --> 0:01:35.080 But in another sense, the CCP is perhaps the last 0:01:35.080 --> 0:01:38.520 regime on earth that truly remembers the previous age of revolution, 0:01:39.120 --> 0:01:41.880 that remembers when the workers took Shanghai in sixty seven, 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:45.120 very nearly took Beijing and eighty nine. These are people 0:01:45.120 --> 0:01:48.160 who understand that China's political system is built on shaving 0:01:48.200 --> 0:01:52.040 a sleeping bear, and no matter how profitable that system is, 0:01:52.800 --> 0:01:55.360 there's always a chance that one day that bear is 0:01:55.400 --> 0:01:59.280 going to wake up. Now the bear isn't fully awake yet. 0:01:59.320 --> 0:02:02.000 We are not shing in China full scale uprising a 0:02:02.080 --> 0:02:05.560 la Sudan or Myanmar, But that bear, the air to 0:02:05.720 --> 0:02:08.240 maybe the most militant working class and modern world has 0:02:08.280 --> 0:02:11.520 ever seen, is starting to open its eyes. So what 0:02:11.680 --> 0:02:15.679 is the CCP currently facing. Since about November, there have 0:02:15.760 --> 0:02:19.880 been widespread anti government protests in China, Unlike anything we've 0:02:19.919 --> 0:02:23.000 seen in the last thirty years. These protests are everywhere. 0:02:23.200 --> 0:02:26.720 They're in Beijing, They're in Nanjing, They're in Shanghai. There 0:02:26.760 --> 0:02:29.120 in guang Show, there in shing John, We'll get back 0:02:29.120 --> 0:02:32.760 to that one in a second. There in Wuhan, reports 0:02:32.760 --> 0:02:35.800 I saw said that there were protests at seventy seven universities. 0:02:36.360 --> 0:02:39.240 That number is almost certainly an under account now, and 0:02:39.240 --> 0:02:42.040 these student protests are not just taking place at small 0:02:42.120 --> 0:02:45.240 colleges in the middle of nowhere. There were protests at 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:48.639 singh Qua University, which for an American audience, I would 0:02:48.639 --> 0:02:51.480 compare to China's version of Harvard. It's the college that 0:02:51.520 --> 0:02:54.600 produces the upper echelon. If the Chinese ruling class, Hi 0:02:54.720 --> 0:02:58.440 Jimping graduated from there, so did his predecessor, Hu Jintao. 0:02:58.760 --> 0:03:01.000 And the only reason that jujuin how his predecessor did 0:03:01.000 --> 0:03:03.040 not graduate from there, is that that guy was so 0:03:03.120 --> 0:03:05.440 old that he went to college under the Japanese occupation. 0:03:06.840 --> 0:03:08.720 When I was originally writing this, I had a joke 0:03:08.800 --> 0:03:10.680 here about how the only city where there haven't been 0:03:10.720 --> 0:03:13.799 protest is Harbin, which is the city in the absolute 0:03:13.880 --> 0:03:17.200 middle of nowhere in northn China. But no, I googled it, 0:03:17.360 --> 0:03:19.840 and it turns out there have been protests in bloody Harbon. 0:03:20.840 --> 0:03:23.160 For people who aren't very good at Chinese geography, which 0:03:23.200 --> 0:03:27.240 is probably most people, this means these protests are everywhere. 0:03:27.360 --> 0:03:29.120 There in the north, there in the south, there in 0:03:29.160 --> 0:03:31.600 the east, there in the west, there in the far West. 0:03:32.280 --> 0:03:34.520 And it's true that a lot of these protests are 0:03:34.560 --> 0:03:37.640 not that big, although some of them are absolutely massive. 0:03:37.960 --> 0:03:39.960 But the importance here is that this is the first 0:03:39.960 --> 0:03:42.920 time in thirty years that we've seen widespread national protests 0:03:42.960 --> 0:03:46.120 over a single issue in China, the anormity of which 0:03:46.160 --> 0:03:48.280 is compounded by the fact that people in the streets 0:03:48.280 --> 0:03:51.200 of cities like Shanghai are openly calling for the fall 0:03:51.240 --> 0:03:54.840 of the CCP and si Jianping, something that by itself 0:03:54.960 --> 0:03:57.080 can get you a decade in prison just for saying. 0:03:58.280 --> 0:04:00.640 We can ask what these protests are acts Lee about. 0:04:01.600 --> 0:04:03.600 The version you see in the American press is that 0:04:03.640 --> 0:04:06.600 these are anti lockdown protests, are protests against China's COVID 0:04:06.720 --> 0:04:10.520 zero policy, or that there's also pro democracy protests against 0:04:10.520 --> 0:04:14.240 the entire regime. And this is sort of true as 0:04:14.280 --> 0:04:17.200 far as it goes, but it doesn't capture the core 0:04:17.279 --> 0:04:20.200 of what's going on, which is that what we're seeing 0:04:20.320 --> 0:04:24.560 is a widespread fusion of labor rebellion, anti police brutality, protests, 0:04:24.600 --> 0:04:28.160 and a revolt against the authoritarian state. The thing that's 0:04:28.160 --> 0:04:31.080 brought all of this together is the CCPs COVID policy. 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:34.359 But that's because that policy is the most visible and 0:04:34.400 --> 0:04:38.560 most concentrated expression of the state's general authoritarian is a 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:41.680 bit brutal war against the working class. We can learn 0:04:41.720 --> 0:04:44.960 a lot about what's actually been happening by going back 0:04:45.000 --> 0:04:47.479 a little bit to the very start of the protests. 0:04:48.640 --> 0:04:53.640 There are three specific events that sparked the protests, two 0:04:53.640 --> 0:04:55.800 of which are pretty well covered, and one of which 0:04:55.839 --> 0:04:58.719 has been basically ignored because of how long ago it happened. 0:04:59.360 --> 0:05:02.479 The first arc is essentially an event in its own right. 0:05:03.120 --> 0:05:05.280 This is what I would call the fox Con revolts, 0:05:05.320 --> 0:05:08.839 a series of worker uprisings against the manufacturer of the iPhone, 0:05:09.400 --> 0:05:12.719 which with a single factory, controls vast portions of the 0:05:12.720 --> 0:05:17.120 regional economy of Hainan Province. Whereas large as factory is based. 0:05:18.200 --> 0:05:20.719 The fox Con revolt is I'm brewing for a long time. 0:05:22.200 --> 0:05:25.839 It begun essentially when fox Con began to impose what's 0:05:25.880 --> 0:05:29.360 called the closed loop system. The closed loop system was 0:05:29.400 --> 0:05:32.400 originally developed by the NBA to run an NBA season 0:05:32.440 --> 0:05:35.360 during the beginning of the pandemic. The idea is that 0:05:35.400 --> 0:05:38.520 you keep everyone inside a closed loop. This means that 0:05:38.600 --> 0:05:41.440 everyone in the production process has no contact with the 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:44.640 outside world at all for as long as the manufacturing 0:05:44.680 --> 0:05:49.200 cycle goes. The CCP started adopting the closed loop as 0:05:49.200 --> 0:05:51.919 they hit problems with their twin imperatives to both stop 0:05:52.040 --> 0:05:54.360 COVID and also to make sure that fox Con hit 0:05:54.400 --> 0:05:57.400 its production targets so Apple could have enough iPhones for 0:05:57.400 --> 0:06:01.240 the Christmas rush. The result was that as an October 0:06:01.279 --> 0:06:04.520 wave of infections hit Hangan province, where fox CON's largest 0:06:04.520 --> 0:06:08.480 factory was located, two hundred thousand workers were put into 0:06:08.480 --> 0:06:11.479 a closed loop system, which meant they were trapped in 0:06:11.520 --> 0:06:14.920 the factory in their dormitories. In order to keep this 0:06:15.000 --> 0:06:18.520 factory running, fox Con needs about a hundred thousand migrant workers. 0:06:19.800 --> 0:06:23.160 The problem, from Capital's perspective with microt workers is that 0:06:23.600 --> 0:06:26.719 they can, if things get bad enough, just go home, 0:06:27.960 --> 0:06:32.560 and that's exactly what happens. Workers inside the fox Con 0:06:32.640 --> 0:06:35.240 plants started to be quarantined with people who were sick 0:06:35.320 --> 0:06:38.160 in the same dormitory and It's worth noting here that 0:06:38.240 --> 0:06:42.080 these dormitories are tiny. The conditions even outside of lockdown 0:06:42.200 --> 0:06:46.040 are atrocious, and when people were suddenly getting quarantined with 0:06:46.200 --> 0:06:50.000 people who were sick, workers essentially just said no and 0:06:50.040 --> 0:06:54.080 started to stage massive breakouts. There are incredible videos of 0:06:54.160 --> 0:06:57.320 these trains of people like along the road walking home 0:06:57.400 --> 0:07:00.840 as sort of hitching rides on people's trucks fleeing if factory. 0:07:01.040 --> 0:07:03.440 We don't actually know how many workers escaped, but it 0:07:03.480 --> 0:07:06.600 was enough to be a massive problem for Capital. Again, 0:07:06.800 --> 0:07:09.160 they need these workers in order to make enough iPhones 0:07:09.200 --> 0:07:11.920 to sell for Christmas. Current estimates suggest that Apple is 0:07:11.960 --> 0:07:15.120 somewhere between eleven and fifteen million units behind what it 0:07:15.160 --> 0:07:18.640 needs to make the Christmas rush. So Fox Con had 0:07:18.680 --> 0:07:21.840 the local government recruiting people to go work in the factory. 0:07:22.280 --> 0:07:24.520 What they told these workers was that if they entered 0:07:24.560 --> 0:07:27.040 the closed loop for thirty days, they'd be given three 0:07:27.040 --> 0:07:30.480 thousand yawn, which is about four hundred and fifteen dollars 0:07:31.000 --> 0:07:33.400 to live on for the next month, and then get 0:07:33.400 --> 0:07:36.840 paid thirty on or about four dollars an hour, and 0:07:36.880 --> 0:07:39.960 then after the end of the next dirty days they'd 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:43.600 get another three thousand john in the US, this would 0:07:43.600 --> 0:07:46.800 be a subminimum wage poverty job for a Chinese worker. 0:07:47.040 --> 0:07:49.520 This is a lot of money, or it would have 0:07:49.640 --> 0:07:53.160 been had it not been for one minor problem. All 0:07:53.200 --> 0:07:55.840 of it was bullshit. Fox Con and the CCP were 0:07:55.920 --> 0:07:58.760 lying out of their asses after workers who are already 0:07:58.760 --> 0:08:01.200 in the closed loop. They learned that the two three 0:08:01.200 --> 0:08:04.080 thousand yuan bonuses weren't going to be paid until March 0:08:04.200 --> 0:08:08.600 and May of next year, meaning that in order to 0:08:08.640 --> 0:08:10.720 get what they were promised for two months of work, 0:08:11.000 --> 0:08:14.800 they were going to have to work for seven months. Also, 0:08:14.960 --> 0:08:16.920 the thirty you on an hour wage that they were 0:08:16.920 --> 0:08:20.080 promised was a lie. They were getting paid substantially less 0:08:20.080 --> 0:08:25.880 than that. So on Tuesday the November, workers who had 0:08:25.880 --> 0:08:29.720 emerged from quarantine to start work only to learn that 0:08:29.760 --> 0:08:32.200 they had been systematically lied to by both the governments 0:08:32.320 --> 0:08:37.760 and Chinese and Taiwanese capitalists, came out of their dormitories 0:08:37.800 --> 0:08:39.800 and demanded that they either get their money or be 0:08:39.880 --> 0:08:42.680 allowed to leave. There's another part of this account that 0:08:42.720 --> 0:08:45.080 I think complicates a lot of the sort of narratives 0:08:45.120 --> 0:08:47.960 that we've heard about what the Chinese prostor about that 0:08:48.240 --> 0:08:50.120 did not make the Western press at all, which is 0:08:50.160 --> 0:08:52.920 that these workers were also demanding that their bosses, quote, 0:08:53.040 --> 0:08:57.559 implement pandemic prevention and control measures. Um, it's not entirely 0:08:57.600 --> 0:09:00.560 clue what the specific demands refers to. It seems to 0:09:00.559 --> 0:09:03.600 be about not quarantining sick people in the same dorms 0:09:03.640 --> 0:09:07.920 as healthy people, a thing that seems relatively obvious, but 0:09:08.920 --> 0:09:13.800 capitalism regardless. The product of bosses ignoring these demands was 0:09:13.880 --> 0:09:17.120 several days of full scale fighting with the police. On 0:09:17.160 --> 0:09:20.600 November twenty three, a bunch of videos began to spread 0:09:20.600 --> 0:09:23.680 of workers taking those metal police barricades that you see 0:09:23.720 --> 0:09:25.719 all the time in the US that are essentially an 0:09:25.800 --> 0:09:27.400 arch with a bunch of bars and not get into 0:09:27.440 --> 0:09:30.719 a flat base. You've you've probably seen these picking them 0:09:30.800 --> 0:09:34.280 up and straight up throwing them at cops or grabbing 0:09:34.320 --> 0:09:36.960 them and beating police riot shields with them. I have 0:09:37.080 --> 0:09:40.000 I have never seen anything like it. It was absolutely wild. 0:09:40.640 --> 0:09:43.280 At this point, after several days of fighting, after their 0:09:43.320 --> 0:09:47.520 own regular security people literally refused to show up to 0:09:47.640 --> 0:09:51.080 go fight these workers, and police from outside had to 0:09:51.080 --> 0:09:54.080 be called in. Fox Con gave up said okay, we 0:09:54.120 --> 0:09:57.440 will give you ten thousand yond to literally leave right now. 0:09:57.880 --> 0:10:01.120 Please just stop, and a lot of people took the 0:10:01.160 --> 0:10:04.640 money and left, And in any other year, in any 0:10:04.640 --> 0:10:06.920 other moment, that would have been the end of it. 0:10:07.720 --> 0:10:10.000 The Fox Con riots would be another episode in the 0:10:10.040 --> 0:10:13.000 never ending series of they tried not to pay us 0:10:13.120 --> 0:10:15.720 riots that are the most common one of the most 0:10:15.720 --> 0:10:20.479 common forms of workers protests in China. Instead, on Thanksgiving 0:10:20.600 --> 0:10:24.440 Day in the United States, videos started to circulate of 0:10:24.440 --> 0:10:27.280 a fire in a residential block in a room Cheet, 0:10:27.320 --> 0:10:30.720 the capital of shing Jong. There are several videos of 0:10:30.760 --> 0:10:34.199 the fire. In one that journalists were able to verify, 0:10:34.360 --> 0:10:36.920 you can hear people screaming from inside the building as 0:10:36.960 --> 0:10:41.200 they tried and failed to escape the flames. Further videos 0:10:41.240 --> 0:10:43.760 showed that cops had barricaded off the streets with metal 0:10:43.800 --> 0:10:46.600 wires as a way to enforcing John's one hundred day 0:10:46.640 --> 0:10:50.600 long lockdown, which prevented firefighters from getting to the scene. 0:10:50.800 --> 0:10:54.640 Firefighters can be seen firing water hoses at the building, 0:10:54.720 --> 0:10:58.319 only for the hoses arc to fall shorts trapped behind 0:10:58.400 --> 0:11:02.520 barricades that prevented them from any closer. Speculation about whether 0:11:02.559 --> 0:11:05.320 the doors of the apartment building themselves have been sealed 0:11:05.320 --> 0:11:08.319 shut with locks or barricaded from the outside, as had 0:11:08.320 --> 0:11:10.880 happened to so many other people's homes during the lockdown 0:11:11.000 --> 0:11:14.880 ran rampant. One video I saw from another city appeared 0:11:14.880 --> 0:11:17.880 to show workers and has met suits who become known 0:11:17.920 --> 0:11:21.679 as the Big Whites, literally welding someone's door shut to 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:24.880 keep them in. To make matters worse, the head of 0:11:24.880 --> 0:11:28.199 the rooms she city Fire rescue department blamed the families 0:11:28.240 --> 0:11:32.320 for their own deaths, saying quote some residents abilities to 0:11:32.360 --> 0:11:36.520 rescue themselves were too weak. These are the videos the 0:11:36.600 --> 0:11:40.520 fragments of nightmares brought to life that started the mass protests. 0:11:41.120 --> 0:11:44.680 This is a revolution scene. At thirty second intervals, everyone 0:11:44.760 --> 0:11:47.440 is trying to beat the sensors. Clips float back and 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:52.360 forth between weach at, Twitter, Telegram back to Weachat again. Ironically, 0:11:52.840 --> 0:11:55.880 many sensors were already home for the weekend, allowing clips 0:11:55.880 --> 0:11:58.480 and posts that otherwise would have been removed immediately to 0:11:58.520 --> 0:12:02.920 circulate for hours, sometimes even days. These brought back the 0:12:02.960 --> 0:12:05.800 memory of the Third Spark, the one that's basically been 0:12:05.880 --> 0:12:08.480 forgotten about in the West, if anyone even cared to 0:12:08.480 --> 0:12:11.280 know about it in the first place. In September, a 0:12:11.360 --> 0:12:13.680 bus full of people with COVID and Guangzho that the 0:12:13.679 --> 0:12:17.480 government was shipping to a quarantine center, crashed and killed 0:12:17.480 --> 0:12:21.960 twenty seven people, wounding twenty others. Conditions in these centers, 0:12:22.080 --> 0:12:24.719 which COVID patients are often forced to go to rather 0:12:24.760 --> 0:12:28.640 than quarantining in their homes, are atrocious. Pictures and videos 0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:31.960 circulate constantly of bathrooms covered in human ship from failing 0:12:32.040 --> 0:12:35.440 drainage systems. As China has already over tax medical systems 0:12:35.480 --> 0:12:37.560 simply failed to keep up with the demands on a 0:12:37.600 --> 0:12:42.079 place by the government, which, like the American government has 0:12:42.080 --> 0:12:45.760 and continues to systematically refuse to invest in medical infrastructure. 0:12:55.800 --> 0:12:59.600 Intimate familiarity with these wretched conditions and the raw horror 0:12:59.640 --> 0:13:02.559 at the s and Xing John and Guangzho sparked protests 0:13:02.559 --> 0:13:05.920 across the country. In a room sheet and now seventy 0:13:06.440 --> 0:13:10.640 Han City under constant police occupation, Han protesters appeared to 0:13:10.679 --> 0:13:13.440 be moved in solidarity with the weaker families killed in 0:13:13.440 --> 0:13:16.839 the fire and fought the police with a ferocity unmatched 0:13:16.880 --> 0:13:19.960 anywhere but the migrant worker villages of Guangzho along the 0:13:19.960 --> 0:13:24.400 Parer River Delta, one of China's great manufacturing hubs. These 0:13:24.440 --> 0:13:27.880 desperate struggles were given relatively little attention by a Western 0:13:27.920 --> 0:13:31.760 media class enamored with the image of students carrying blank, 0:13:31.800 --> 0:13:35.160 white pieces of paper to protest the censorship, a common 0:13:35.200 --> 0:13:39.040 form of protests in places like Hong Kong. This time, 0:13:39.080 --> 0:13:42.040 at least, they were tied to a particularly funny piece 0:13:42.040 --> 0:13:46.280 of media censorship. As protests mounted, people started posting an 0:13:46.360 --> 0:13:49.720 article version of a speech by Mao called let the 0:13:49.760 --> 0:13:53.880 People Speak, The Sky will Not Fall. Chinese censors quickly 0:13:53.920 --> 0:13:57.080 ran into a classic CCP problem, which is that in 0:13:57.160 --> 0:14:01.480 a state whose heroes are communist revolutionaries, celebrated historical figures 0:14:01.520 --> 0:14:05.040 produce an immense repertoire of slogans and quotes for subsequent 0:14:05.080 --> 0:14:09.080 generations and revolutionaries to draw from, which has caused the CCP, 0:14:09.200 --> 0:14:11.720 at various points in time to ban the opening of 0:14:11.760 --> 0:14:15.800 its own national anthem arise Ye who refused to be slaves. 0:14:17.040 --> 0:14:19.560 As sensors banned Let the People speak, the Guy will 0:14:19.560 --> 0:14:22.440 not Fall. People began posting the article, but with the 0:14:22.440 --> 0:14:26.520 words replaced by squares. This too was also deleted, and 0:14:26.560 --> 0:14:29.840 then posting simply blanks white squares themselves, which saw their 0:14:29.880 --> 0:14:33.320 reflection in the students in the streets. The CCP, in 0:14:33.360 --> 0:14:36.920 turn retreated to its traditional tactic of blaming the protests 0:14:36.920 --> 0:14:40.120 on foreign forces interfering in China, a claim which is 0:14:40.160 --> 0:14:42.240 less than credible on a country that has rolled up 0:14:42.280 --> 0:14:45.720 the CIA's entire in country intelligence network at least once 0:14:45.760 --> 0:14:49.200 in the last decade. There's an incredible exchange that has 0:14:49.240 --> 0:14:51.440 made the rounds between a cop who is telling a 0:14:51.440 --> 0:14:54.320 group of protesters that there are quote foreign forces around 0:14:54.400 --> 0:14:58.280 manipulating the protests, who is immediately yelled at by a 0:14:58.320 --> 0:15:02.360 guy screaming, who are the born forces? Marks and angles 0:15:02.560 --> 0:15:06.680 Stalin and Lenin. Another man appears and asks, Hi, can 0:15:06.720 --> 0:15:08.840 I ask if it was foreign forces who started the 0:15:08.880 --> 0:15:12.840 fire in Shing John? Was the guigo bus overturned by 0:15:12.840 --> 0:15:16.560 foreign forces? Another man grabs the mic and says, was 0:15:16.600 --> 0:15:19.600 everyone told to come here by foreign forces? The crowd 0:15:19.680 --> 0:15:24.360 shouts no. He then makes an incredibly obvious point, we 0:15:24.400 --> 0:15:27.480 can't even access to foreign internet. How are foreign forces 0:15:27.520 --> 0:15:30.480 meant to be communicating with us? Another man says, we 0:15:30.560 --> 0:15:33.920 only have domestic forces, not allowing us to govern themselves. 0:15:34.320 --> 0:15:38.960 Where are these foreign forces from the moon? Still managing 0:15:38.960 --> 0:15:41.840 these accusations to become a constant part of the protests, 0:15:42.280 --> 0:15:45.000 with calls from protesters to stop chanting things like down 0:15:45.040 --> 0:15:47.680 with the CCP, and attempts to keep the demands focused 0:15:47.680 --> 0:15:51.880 on COVID policy like ending COVID zero. And this is 0:15:51.880 --> 0:15:54.920 where things get incredibly muddled by a Western press that 0:15:55.000 --> 0:15:57.360 decided to stop giving a shit about COVID deaths a 0:15:57.440 --> 0:16:01.160 year ago, and a set of contrarians are ring that no, actually, 0:16:01.240 --> 0:16:05.400 China's COVID policy is actually good. This entire debate hinges 0:16:05.440 --> 0:16:07.960 on the conflation of the state of government policy of 0:16:08.040 --> 0:16:11.120 zero COVID, which is an attempt to stop all cases 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:14.120 of COVID, and the actual execution of the policy, which 0:16:14.160 --> 0:16:16.440 has taken the form of a war against China's working 0:16:16.440 --> 0:16:21.000 class and a set of draconian police state abuses. One 0:16:21.080 --> 0:16:24.400 thing that Western quote unquote experts have been quick to 0:16:24.640 --> 0:16:27.560 point out is that will the CCP has to keep 0:16:27.600 --> 0:16:30.560 doing COVID zero or one point five million people will die. 0:16:32.200 --> 0:16:34.200 There was a tiny bit of truth to this in 0:16:34.280 --> 0:16:37.680 that one reason Chinese COVID restriction so so harsh is 0:16:37.720 --> 0:16:40.240 that if COVID was simply let rip like it has 0:16:40.240 --> 0:16:42.520 been in the US, it would go through China's largely 0:16:42.560 --> 0:16:47.320 unvaccinated rural elderly population like a chainsaw, and unlike in 0:16:47.360 --> 0:16:49.920 the US, if a million people died in China because 0:16:49.960 --> 0:16:52.840 the government fucked up a pandemic response, party officials will 0:16:52.840 --> 0:16:55.480 be getting beaten to death in the streets. And part 0:16:55.480 --> 0:16:57.880 of the reason for the crisis in China in the 0:16:57.920 --> 0:17:00.040 first place is that the rest of the world a 0:17:00.280 --> 0:17:03.560 up on trying to contain COVID entirely. If the rest 0:17:03.600 --> 0:17:06.439 of the world had, you know, done their jobs and 0:17:06.520 --> 0:17:08.719 stamped out the virus, none of us would be here 0:17:08.840 --> 0:17:13.359 right now. On the other hand, no, absolutely not. You 0:17:13.480 --> 0:17:16.520 do not actually need to wild people into their houses 0:17:16.760 --> 0:17:18.760 or drag them by force out of their home so 0:17:18.800 --> 0:17:20.800 they can die and bus crashes on their way to 0:17:20.920 --> 0:17:25.320 unsafe and unsanitary pseudo hospitals with bathroom floors literally covered 0:17:25.400 --> 0:17:28.800 ship in order to contain the pandemic. Lots of pandemics 0:17:28.800 --> 0:17:31.639 across human history have been contained without doing this ship 0:17:32.320 --> 0:17:35.199 just because the two great world powers have decided that 0:17:35.240 --> 0:17:38.960 the COVID responses are kill a million people by forcing 0:17:38.960 --> 0:17:41.040 everyone back to work so that no one has to 0:17:41.080 --> 0:17:43.640 actually deal with the political consequences of telling a bunch 0:17:43.640 --> 0:17:47.800 of unbelievably deranged and heavily armed fascist no and lock 0:17:47.880 --> 0:17:50.400 two people in a factory and force them to make 0:17:50.400 --> 0:17:52.680 iPhones and then beat the absolute shit out of them 0:17:52.680 --> 0:17:55.240 when it turns out you lied to them about their pay. 0:17:55.480 --> 0:17:57.960 Doesn't mean that there aren't other options that we could 0:17:57.960 --> 0:18:01.440 take for pandemic responses if we decided to stop letting 0:18:01.480 --> 0:18:04.040 a bunch of venal and corrupt assholes rule us all. 0:18:04.560 --> 0:18:07.399 And this is something that people in China also understand. 0:18:07.560 --> 0:18:10.240 Even if the Western press corps dead set on presenting 0:18:10.280 --> 0:18:13.840 their demands as if they're American anti maskers, you can 0:18:13.880 --> 0:18:17.879 tell obviously the Chinese protesters are not simply a copy 0:18:17.960 --> 0:18:20.680 of right wing American fascists. By simply looking at a 0:18:20.800 --> 0:18:23.120 picture of a protest and seeing how many people are 0:18:23.119 --> 0:18:27.920 wearing masks. China is not the US. Regular people actually 0:18:27.960 --> 0:18:31.040 do care about containing the pandemic. This is why there 0:18:31.080 --> 0:18:33.200 is a real pandemic response in the first place, after 0:18:33.240 --> 0:18:35.720 the government utterly boshed it. If you look at the 0:18:35.800 --> 0:18:38.720 actual demands of the protesters, you will see things that 0:18:38.800 --> 0:18:41.560 normally would seem more at home with liberal American protesters 0:18:41.600 --> 0:18:45.600 attempting to see pandemic restrictions enforced properly, Things like our 0:18:45.640 --> 0:18:49.960 pandemic response must be based on science. But people, even 0:18:50.000 --> 0:18:52.119 people who don't want to die of a plague, do 0:18:52.200 --> 0:18:55.480 not want to be horribly abused by cops or horrifically 0:18:55.520 --> 0:18:58.760 exploited by the state and capitalists. And that, I think 0:18:59.040 --> 0:19:03.080 is something we do all understand. Only time can tell 0:19:03.119 --> 0:19:06.359 what will happen to these protests. The government is quietly 0:19:06.440 --> 0:19:09.920 making concessions and not so quietly hunting down people who 0:19:09.920 --> 0:19:13.159 took to the streets. It is entirely possible that the 0:19:13.160 --> 0:19:17.560 protest will simply die, and that in two or three 0:19:17.640 --> 0:19:20.960 years most people will have forgot they ever happened. From 0:19:20.960 --> 0:19:25.040 a sort of brutal materialist perspective, however, it seems unlikely 0:19:26.200 --> 0:19:29.080 China's social system could function fine as long as growth 0:19:29.119 --> 0:19:32.879 was at fifteen percent or ten percent, or even eight percent. 0:19:33.400 --> 0:19:36.320 But when growth inevitably comes down to two percent, but 0:19:36.440 --> 0:19:38.920 the deal of keep your head down and everyone will 0:19:38.960 --> 0:19:42.960 get rich starts to look a lot less attractive. COVID 0:19:43.040 --> 0:19:46.640 is simply intensified all of the traditional contradictions inside Chinese 0:19:46.640 --> 0:19:50.440 society and made visible the horrors that previously had been obscured, 0:19:50.880 --> 0:19:53.679 and it seems unlikely that those contradictions will someday vanish. 0:19:54.480 --> 0:19:58.200 But here in the presence, the impossible continues, and every 0:19:58.240 --> 0:20:00.320 day it does is another day that the gates of 0:20:00.359 --> 0:20:05.720 possibility and sh a bit further open. This espina could 0:20:05.720 --> 0:20:08.040 Happen here. You can find us that Happened Here pot 0:20:08.080 --> 0:20:11.000 on Twitter or Instagram. We have a website, cool zone 0:20:11.000 --> 0:20:13.199 media dot com where you can see the sources for 0:20:13.320 --> 0:20:16.359 this and other episodes. Enjoy your week, and remember that 0:20:16.480 --> 0:20:21.440 you too can defeat your own ruling class. It could 0:20:21.440 --> 0:20:23.800 Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media. For 0:20:23.880 --> 0:20:26.600 more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool 0:20:26.680 --> 0:20:28.639 zone media dot com or check us out on the 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:31.400 I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen 0:20:31.440 --> 0:20:34.359 to podcasts. You can find sources for it could Happen Here, 0:20:34.440 --> 0:20:37.880 updated monthly at cool zone media dot com slash sources. 0:20:38.080 --> 0:20:38.920 Thanks for listening.