China COVID protests die down, but policy resentment remains
Bill was standing with a group of people mostly in their 20s when a young woman started to lead the chanting. “Give me liberty, or give me death,” she shouted, her voice cracking at one point. Political security' is a key concern of China's leadership and security services [Thomas Peter/Reuters] Others followed her lead, repeating the chant, and raising sheets of blank paper, a defining symbol of the latest wave of protests in China. “I had tears in my eyes,” said Bill, a 24-year-old graduate student in Chengdu who, like all the other people interviewed for this story, asked to be identified by a pseudonym for fear of retribution. “Hearing those people chanting these words, in China of all the places, makes me feel that I have never been alone.” “If all of us can be this brave, then this country will still have hope,” he added. In a rare nationwide display of defiance, protests calling for an end to China’s harsh zero-COVID policy erupted over the weekend in several major citie...