PRESS RELEASE & STATEMENT | November 30, 2022
The Free China Movement honors the courage of Chinese citizens who participated in the extraordinary protest wave now widely known as the White Paper Movement.
Reuters footage carried by Voice of America documented residents in Jinan confronting COVID lockdown barriers and demanding that restrictions be lifted. Across mainland China, citizens gathered in cities and on university campuses. Their individual demands and slogans differed and should be documented accurately.
But the movement also crossed into explicitly political territory. In Shanghai, demonstrators publicly called for Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party to step down. Elsewhere, citizens raised demands for freedom of expression, political rights and an end to arbitrary restrictions.
“Fear is not the same thing as consent. When citizens inside mainland China peacefully demand freedom, political rights and accountable government, their voices deserve to be preserved and heard.”
The Free China Movement believes that the people of China possess the same fundamental rights as people everywhere: freedom of speech, peaceful assembly and association; freedom of the press and access to information; freedom from arbitrary detention and political persecution; and the right to choose, replace and hold accountable those who govern them.
The White Paper Movement should be remembered not merely as an anti-lockdown protest, but as an extraordinary moment when people across mainland China demonstrated that censorship and repression cannot extinguish the desire for dignity and freedom.
A free China cannot be imposed from abroad. It must ultimately be chosen by the Chinese people themselves. The Free China Movement stands with every person who peacefully exercises that right.
Source note: Reuters footage carried by Voice of America and contemporaneous VOA reporting, November 2022.