Hello! I hope you’re having a great week. In this edition, we’re looking at the challenge the recent protests in China pose for President Xi Jinping. We’re also looking at the death toll from the anti-regime protests in Iran and why Turkey wants to launch a ground offensive into northern Syria.
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This day that year
2021: Exactly 55 years after becoming independent from the United Kingdom, Barbados became a republic. Queen Elizabeth II was replaced by Sandra Mason, then governor-general, as the head of state.
1939: The Soviet Union invaded Finland after Helsinki refused to cede substantial border territories to Moscow (sought to protect Saint Petersburg against a possible future Nazi German attack) amid the Second World War.
Challenge for Xi
Rare public protests over China’s ‘Zero COVID’ policy spread rapidly across the country over the weekend. Protesters were also calling for greater democracy in the one-party state of 1.4 billion people. These protests happened almost simultaneously in many major cities including the Chinese capital Beijing and the financial hub Shanghai, as well as the provinces.
The demonstrations were seemingly sparked by the death of 10 people in a November 24 high-rise apartment block fire in Urumqi city of Xinjiang province. Strict COVID-19 lockdown restrictions may have prevented people in the building from evacuating, and may have hampered fire fighters’ efforts, reports suggest. Such lockdown restrictions mean that many residents are restricted to their homes for prolonged periods of time, sometimes for over three months.
Some protest videos from Shanghai posted on social media showed people, especially the young, openly raising slogans such as “Xi Jinping, step down” and “communist party, step down”. Elsewhere in Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuzhen, and even in places like Beijing’s Tsinghua University — Xi’s alma mater — students and young protesters held aloft scraps of paper or blank paper as a mark of protest. Demonstrators in Hong Kong had started this trend in 2020.
Read — China’s protests: Blank paper becomes the symbol of rare demonstrations
Protests do happen in China. But they usually happen in isolated pockets, are smaller in scale and often lack coordination. We had seen protests in Shanghai earlier this year when the port city was placed under a very long lockdown in order to curb the spread of novel coronavirus infections. But the protests that happened in recent days are quite extraordinary considering how tight the surveillance is in China, and the measures security forces often take to clamp down on slightest dissent threatening the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) grip on power.
Challenged by these protests, Beijing and Shanghai beefed up security and the security apparatus started dispersing demonstrators. It’s unclear how many were arrested or detained. But cities like Guangzhou also responded by relaxing some COVID-19 restrictions (yet, still retained the Zero COVID policy).
The Zero COVID conundrum
At a time when most of the world has done away with nearly all COVID-19-related restrictions, China has doubled down on isolation, mass testing and the ‘Green Health Code’ tracking app. It’s currently the only major economy to have retained the Zero COVID approach. Adhering to the CCP leadership’s orders, local administrations still respond by imposing stringent lockdowns where necessary. Let’s also remember that Li Qiang, who is expected to succeed Li Keqiang as China’s premier in a few months, is also being seen as having been promoted despite public anger against the stringent lockdown he oversaw in Shanghai earlier this year.
The Zero COVID policy, however, has severely affected businesses and the Chinese economy. Questions are also being raised whether the approach is working. Reported daily COVID-19 cases in mainland China rose to an all-time high of around 40,000 earlier this week despite such measures.
In the run-up to the CCP congress in October, it was widely believed that the government would start revoking COVID-19 restrictions altogether as soon as Xi secured a precedent-breaking third consecutive term in office. It was seen as important for the CCP to prove that its Zero COVID model was more effective than what the West had done. Yet, more than a month after the party congress concluded, the Chinese government hasn’t done away with its Zero COVID policy (but has relaxed some restrictions).
Strict lockdowns over the past two years means that there’s little herd immunity against the SARS-CoV-2 virus inside China. Scientists also suggest that the efficacy of Chinese homegrown vaccines is doubtful and the protection offered by the jabs’ may be fading away. Sections of the population — particularly some elderly — also remain unvaccinated because of vaccine hesitancy, though the government is trying to boost vaccinations in that age group. This scenario means that the government is perhaps finding it difficult to do away with the Zero COVID policy as infections would spread quickly and there are considerable health risks, Bloomberg analysts forecast. Revoking Zero COVID now may lead to almost 1.6 million deaths, 5 million hospitalisations and over 112 million symptomatic COVID-19 cases, a peer reviewed study by Shanghai’s Fudan University, published in the Nature journal in May, had suggested.
With the ‘Great Firewall’ of internet censorship in place and restriction on news media, it’s difficult to determine the true spread and depth of anger against the CCP. Use of technology to crackdown on dissidents, lack of an effective opposition and lack of truly free non-governmental organisations makes it very difficult for activists and citizens to coordinate demonstrations. Plus, there’s no centralised leadership to these protests. All this means that such protests can fizzle out quickly. But these protests, no matter how quickly they fizzle out or are suppressed, provid a rare peek into Chinese public anger against the CCP and the challenge they can pose for Xi’s rule.
What else?
Turkey may launch ground offensive into Syria
Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria may be imminent, reports suggest. The offensive would be an extension of the airstrikes the Turkish military has conducted in the area as part of Operation Claw-Sword. The operation and the possible invasion are a response to the November 13 bombing in Istanbul, which the Turkish government claims, was carried out by Kurdish separatists (who have denied any involvement). Six people died and another 81 were injured in the Istanbul attack. Other players in the region, including the US and Russia, have urged Ankara to refrain from such a ground offensive into Syria.
The Turkish government doesn’t differentiate between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) — a Kurdish militant political organisation — and the People’s Defence Units (YPG), a mostly-Kurdish militia holding control over swathes of northern Syria. Both organisations are considered by Turkey as terror outfits. The YPG leads the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and not only fights Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, but also against terror outfits operating in Syria such as the so-called Islamic State. Like the PKK, SDF is also recognised as a terrorist group by Turkey. Turkey’s NATO ally United States also considers the PKK a terrorist organisation, but supports the SDF.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s approval ratings are low ahead of next year’s election owing to the distress caused by the economic crisis. The attack in Istanbul – Turkey’s economic, cultural and tourism hub — may have adversely impacted his popularity even more. To boost his popularity, Erdoğan wants to be seen as having acted decisively against terror threats. “We are continuing the air operation and will come down hard on the terrorists from land at the most convenient time for us,” Erdogan told his political party's lawmakers in parliament last week.
Through a series of interventions since 2016, Turkey has already occupied a large patch of land in northern Syria along the Turkish border — described by Erdogan’s government as a “safe corridor”. These offensives in Syria had also come after similar attacks in Turkey in the mid-2010s. Ankara has backed several local militias to help it hold that territory. Creation of this geographical security zone meant to prevent terrorists from entering, spanning several settlements, has led to friction between the Turkish forces, and the locals and local Kurdish forces.
Since the civil war began next door over a decade ago, Turkey has hosted around 3.5 million Syrian refugees and has now started sending some of them back to parts of Syria not under Assad’s control. Hosting the refugees has, many believe, added economic and security stress on Turkey.
Iran protests: Over 300 killed so far
Brigadier General Amirali Hajizadeh of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has acknowledged, for the first time, that more than 300 people have been killed in over two months of protests triggered by the custodial death of Mahsa Amini. The protests have snowballed into a nationwide struggle for political freedom with demonstrators turning against the regime and its supreme leader Ali Khamenei. The death toll provided by Hajizadeh includes both the protesters as well as security personnel. Iran has deployed security forces to quash what they see as “riots”. Hajizadeh admitted that these are not the latest numbers. Oslo-based non-governmental organisation Iran Human Rights suggests the number is just short of 450. Thousands of Iranians have been charged and at least six have been sentenced to death with appeals pending.
Protests against the regime that took charge following the 1979 revolution have happened in Iran before, but these seem to be the strongest and the most widespread so far. These demonstrations, however, lack central coordination leading many to believe that they may fizzle out. Some others fear that the security forces will eventually strike back with greater force to end these protests.
Interesting stuff
Bloomberg’s Todd Woody tells the stories of the people of Palau who are coping with increasing heat waves, surging storms and dying coral reefs that are threatening their millennia-old civilization. Read the full piece here.
What will the end of President Vladimir Putin’s rule mean for Russia, Ukraine and the rest of the world? Ten experts, including international relations scholar John Mearsheimer, author Amy Knight, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s chief of staff Leonid Volkov and former American ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul, explore what could happen after Putin. Read The Wall Street Journal’s piece here.
“Taiwan has to find some mix of the approaches that I’d heard about: preparing for a war while avoiding it; talking to China without being coerced by it; drawing closer to the U.S. without being reduced to a chess piece on the board of a great game; tending to a young democracy without letting divisions weaken it; asserting a unique identity without becoming an independent country.” Ben Rhodes, former American deputy national security advisor and author, writes in The Atlantic about how Taiwan is preparing for a possible invasion by China. Read the full story here (it’s a long read). On the same topic, France 24’s story on how the Taiwanese people are coping with the Chinese threat. Watch the video here.
“[Former Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef’s] succession would have seen the crown passing to the generation below for the first time, but still to a different branch of the family, maintaining that delicate balance. But then came the palace coup — which not only shoved aside MBS’s main rival, but also destroyed the old succession model that prized seniority and consensus within the family, by setting up the passing of power directly from father to son within one branch of the family.” Anuj Chopra writes in detail in The Guardian about the bitter power struggle among Saudi Arabian princes and the 2017 palace coup that brought Mohammed bin Salman to power. Read the full article here.