This picture (among others) has been circulating around WeChat and other social media today.
Thousands of retirees protested in Hankou today, the second such protest since the one performed one week ago, over the government’s sudden and arbitrary reduction in health benefits.
You can tell this is a protest in China because of the violence as the authoritarian state grinds those who dare speak out against its policies under tank treads and truncheon blows in clouds of tear gas and worse.
Oddly missing from this picture, given the image people have of Chinese governance:
- Tear gas.
- Truncheons.
- Tanks.
Oddly missing too from this picture for those who are familiar with protests of equivalent size in the USA or the UK or other such places:
- Protestor violence.
You have to give credit to the survivors of the February 8th carnage. It must take some serious courage to come back a week later to be ground under tank treads and smashed under truncheon blows again.
They may be framed just out of view. The absence of things in single photos doesn’t mean they’re not there. However, I haven’t seen other photos, so speculation is useless.
If you’d however show lots of photos from different cameras and viewpoints in different angles at different times, like it is usual for protests in USA and Europe, I’m sure we can determine that there was no tear gas and water cannons anywhere.
I have looked at approximately 10 additional photos and didn’t see police or protestor violence.
I’m glad the CPC allows demonstrations. There’s lots of time to kick in the doors of people afterwards, like German police did with Letzte Generation protests.