China's stunning reversal on lockdowns showed that mass protests can influence policy change in the country — but experts say it still doesn't threaten Xi's regime
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- China finally relaxed its zero-COVID measures after rare protests raged across the country.
- But experts on China say it's unlikely the protests will embolden future political movements.
- Xi's grip on power — and social media — makes it too difficult for widespread unrest to bubble up, they said.
On Wednesday, China finally gave its residents a breather.
In a national memo, the central government announced it would be rolling out 10 immediate changes to the draconian COVID policies that have disgruntled millions of residents with snap lockdowns and repeated mass testing.
The changes come after protests against COVID measures erupted all across China — rare for a country where dissent is snuffed out quickly. Students rallied on campus to decry the lockdowns. Frustrated residents gathered on Beijing's streets, yelling, "No to COVID tests, yes to freedom."
And after three years of pledging to stick by its zero-case strategy, China's leaders relented in a stunning reversal, telling authorities to stop using temporary blockades and allowing the use of antigen kits instead of mass swab tests.
But the chances of this winter's protests inspiring any eventual, larger movement against the Chinese government — or any unsanctioned political movement — are slim to none, experts on China told Insider.
The protests show mass anger can influence government policy, but not regime change
Alicia García-Herrero, the Hong Kong-based chief economist for Asia Pacific at Natixis, said the best way for the Chinese government to avoid further protests was to stimulate its economy — which it's done by relaxing COVID measures.
"I think a lot will depend on how successful the opening up from zero-COVID might be," she told Insider.
"There is of course a risk that Chinese people will read the government's immediate turnaround as protests being effective, increasing the chance of new protests," she said.
Dylan Loh, an assistant professor of public policy and global affairs at the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore, said it's still unclear how exactly the protests impacted the government's decisions.
The economy had also been floundering under zero-COVID, and Chinese President Xi Jinping earlier this year announced adjustments to coronavirus measures to make life easier for residents.
"By and large, the protests were directed against the COVID restrictions rather than illustrating any sort of mass discontent with Xi or the regime," said Loh.
Baogang He, the chair of international relations at Deakin University in Australia, agreed that the protests show how mass anger can influence government policy, but not regime change.
"Chinese protestors are realists," he told Insider.
The central government, he said, has become particularly adept at managing dissent.
Nothing close to an Arab Spring yet
Xi has long been vigilant about the possibility of China experiencing its own version of the Arab Spring — when social media fueled uprisings and armed rebellions in the Arab world. China's wildly popular social media platforms, the Twitter-like Weibo and superapp WeChat, are heavily moderated to ban anti-government messages.
Still, residents frustrated with the COVID measures found ways to break through robust censorship by holding up blank sheets of paper or sarcastically spamming the Mandarin word for "good" on social media posts.
"More than anything else, I think the protests probably demonstrate that the state's surveillance mechanisms can be overcome. However, that may require a very significant nationwide issue," said Chong Ja Ian, a professor at the National University of Singapore's political science department. "Whether the protests are effective is another issue."
The demonstrations don't amount to anything like the Arab Spring just yet, Chong said, noting that although the protestors echoed similar sympathies throughout China, there weren't any signs of organization or strategy.
Lu Xi, an assistant professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, said any real challenge to Xi's power would likely also need strong support from opposition parties.
"No one is strong enough to exploit or dare to use these protests to mount a challenge to Xi Jinping," Xi, the professor, told Insider.
The Chinese president showed the true, uncontested extent of his power on October 28, when the party leadership announced who would hold the top seven positions in China over the next five years. All seven were Xi's close allies or confidants, confirming signals that other party factions, like the one which included past leaders Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, had lost almost all of their influence.
"The Communist Party has completed a centralized reform of its political structure," Xi, the professor, said. "The old factions have died out."
Chong said that although Xi holds extensive power in China, the protests and subsequent rollback both underscore how he can make major mistakes, too. After all, Xi attached zero-COVID to his personal legacy, he said.
"The bigger, longer term risk for the CCP may be internal," Chong said.
"When Xi gets older and less energetic, and he is about 70, he and his successors may come under more pressure for past slip-ups," he added.
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