Originally Posted by
Aisin Gioro
Since this post contains coronavirus politics, authoritarianism, and general information, I wasn't sure where to put it, but I'll posit it here. Mods please feel free to reassign if/as appropriate:
This is footage from the bridge connecting Hubei province with Jiangxi province. The lockdown on Hubei is being eased this week, and people are officially being allowed to move around, leave the area, and return to work in surrounding areas if they have a "green" health code, which is checked on an official APP everyone is required to have on their phone as part of the programme. It seems that the police from Jiangxi didn't care. They refused to recognize the green code and erected "checkpoints" [barricades] to "screen" [keep out] Hubei people. When the Hubei police went to discuss it and argued for getting things opened up...the Jiangxi police arrested them on the ludicrous charge of being "fake police". Word got around, and it didn't go over very well with the frustrated Hubei people.
Significantly, a number of Hubei police joined with the people and started scuffling with the Jiangxi police, with some even joining the people in flipping over a Jiangxi police van (though some of the Hubei police still look like they are trying to calm the situation down). The groups started chanting, "Go for it/be strong, Hubei!" and "Shame on Jiangxi police!" and rushed the bridge.
Some background here:
There has been a lot of prejudice in China against Hubei people during the epidemic, much worse that what Western media is worried about against Asian people in the US/Canada/UK/Australia, etc. This has lead to a kind of solidarity among Hubei people who felt angry about this, combined with the lack of government response and vigorous cover-ups, especially in the early days of the outbreak. Lots of pent-up negative energy, and much of it is directed at the government. The fact that the Hubei police were joining in shows that they are starting to think of themselves as part of "the people" of Hubei, not agents of the government.
Contrary to what might be expected, most police in China are not scary, brutish agents of government repression in the eyes of the average Chinese person. They are expected to be fairly mild-mannered and not intervene in people's daily lives, as this reinforces the (literal) party line that "I'm from the government and I'm here to help". Think of the old picture of British police helping lost children find their parents, or firefighters rescuing kittens from trees, and that's what the government wants to project for the police. It's way more common to see ordinary Chinese police doing a whole lot of nothing over the course of their day, rather than ferreting out dissidents or snatching people for re-education. There are special departments for that, ruthless and effective but low-key, and the government works hard to keep the popular perception of the police as positive as possible. Consequently, most Chinese people have a positive, supportive view of the police and are not hostile to or afraid of them. For the general population to riot like this and start flipping cars, smashing windows, and shouting down the police shows serious levels of both anger at the government and feeling of being emboldened.
In short, this is exactly the kind of scene that implies a fraying of the established order and a rising sense of popular sentiment. Exactly the kind of thing the government gets really, really nervous about, so it will be interesting to see what the response is (beyond the immediate actions to dismiss and bury the news). I am still worried that the government will effectively capitalize on the outbreak, but events like this give me some hope.
(Also, that is some really poor social distancing going on. As much as I support the idea of going head-on at the government in China, I'm also not sure how I feel about people pouring out of the epicentre of an outbreak, the actual status of which is almost certainly being lied about.)