We've got a special bonus episode this week on the protests over the weekend of November 26th-27th in multiple cities around China. Joining Kaiser and Jeremy are old friends David Moser and Jeremiah Jenne, co-hosts of the Barbarians at the Gate podcast, who have 50 years in Beijing between them. David Moser is a linguist, academic administrator, and accomplished jazz pianist and composer. Jeremiah Jenne is a writer and historian. Both David and Jeremiah are still in Beijing, and they offer an on-the-ground account of what happened and what it all means.

3:12 – Summary of latest protest developments

7:55 – Popular Chinese sentiments regarding the virus   

10:23 – The scale of these protests

13:22 – Demographics of the protests

17:06 – How the Urumqi fire incident exacerbated latent frustrations

20:39 – The zero-COVID policy’s disproportionate burden on women

26:23 – Have loosened restrictions paradoxically been the impetus for popular protest?

30:57 – WeChat account suspension and the censorship apparatus response  

35:13 – The role of students in the protests

40:29 – Comparisons between the current protest movement and 1989

42:44 – Assessing the limits of the protestors’ demands

44:49 – The salience of “hostile foreign influence” argument for the public   

51:42 – How vaccination skepticism prolonged the zero-COVID policy

55:04 – The police and security apparatus response thus far

A transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com.

Jeremy: The Twitter account 李老师不是你老师 (Lǐ lǎoshī bùshì nǐ lǎoshī), with the handle @whyyoutouzhele; Cindy Yu’s Twitter account @CindyXiaodanYu

Jeremiah: Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China by Ruth Rogaski

David: The Globe and Mail article “In rare show of weakness, China's censors struggle to keep up with zero COVID protests” by James Griffith; Speak Not: Empire, Identity and the Politics of Language by James Griffith

Kaiser: Happiness is 4 Million Pounds, a New York Times documentary by Hao Wu