ARTISTIC PROTESTS ERUPT IN BEIJING AGAINST COVID POLICY

It has been more than two years since Chinese people have faced the strictest covid protocols along with repeated compulsory testing, travel restrictions, and lockdowns. However, the Chinese government is strictly following Zero covid tolerance policies and President Xi Jinping is quite adamant about accepting nothing less than that. But, this has resulted in the piling-up of anger and frustration among the populace, which was manifested in Beijing on August 24. The two seemingly unrelated protests may be viewed as part of a larger stream of oft-censored artistic dissent against the country’s pandemic policy. In both the protests, covid testing booths, which have sprouted up everywhere to create “15 minute testing service circles” in compliance with Central government mandates, were painted with slogans by unidentified protesters.

The first protest led to the painting of a testing booth with slogans referencing two defining phenomena in modern Chinese history: the 1989 Tiananmen democracy movement and the mass demolition campaigns of the 21st century. The protesters have written “give me liberty or give me death,” and mimicked the once-ubiquitous “demolish” signs, the character chai circled in red and “dumbass prevention and control.”

The second protest involved single characters spray-painted onto eight covid testing booths across Beijing’s Wangjing District that, read together, spelled out: “It’s been three years, I’m already numb” since China’s prevention and control policy has become a campaign that demands all-out mobilization, leaving no room for “numbness. This is, however, not the first time people have protested