Law on my side: How Chinese are protesting against illegal local Covid-19 measures

In a quiet revolution, lawyers, police and former judges are offering legal advice online, pointing out that many local measures violate government policies and laws
These well-educated, legally literate people can act as a buffer in clashes between the masses and the party, challenging the party to course-correct when their interests are at stake

Chi Yin

Published: 7:45am, 18 Dec 2022

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In late November, Chinese protesters filled streets in highly visible acts of resistance against China’s draconian Covid-19 restrictions. Meanwhile, and for months preceding the protests, a group of legal professionals has engaged in a quieter but more revolutionary form of resistance.

Their venues are not city streets but internet forums. Their objective: to teach ordinary Chinese about the laws that prohibit many of the worst behaviours experienced during lockdown.

During the Covid-19 epidemic, hundreds of millions of Chinese experienced restrictions of personal freedom. In many places, including Shanghai and Henan, Covid-positive minors were taken into quarantine without their guardians. Residential committees in many cities restricted residents’ movements.

Some authorities blocked residential buildings’ stairways and even fire escapes. The death of 10 people in an apartment fire in Urumqi triggered recent protests, but the frustrations were legion.

The accumulation of grievances has led to a widely shared feeling of disproportionality and injustice. This phenomenon is familiar to scholars of Chinese history. Large protests, from the May Fourth Movement in 1919 to Tiananmen Square in 1989, have been expressions of discontent, often poorly articulated and without a basis in law.

This moment is different. Legal experts have emerged on the internet applying legal scrutiny and offering advice to the aggrieved. Many local Covid-control measures, they point out, are not only intolerable but illegal: they violate the central government’s policies and laws.

These quiet activists include lawyers, police officers, professors and former judges. They comb through laws, and the constantly changing Covid-19 policies and local rules, to offer distressed citizens suggestions solidly grounded in law.

A former senior judge in Beijing openly opined that when a “Big White” – a hazmat-suited enforcer of Covid-19 policy – engages in illegal activities such as beatings or illegally entering homes, he acts on behalf of a local administrative body that can be held liable.

A lawyer invoked multiple laws to argue that, without approval from a county-level authority or higher, the police cannot arbitrarily check the contents of citizens’ mobile phones. In one case, a local police station in Zhejiang issued an apology and suspended an offending officer. Some experts even posted a chart of “guidelines for argument”, with step-by-step instructions on what to say when forced by the authorities into Covid-19 testing.

Perhaps ironically, these widely shared articles and images contribute significantly to what has long been Communist Party policy: strengthening education in the general knowledge of law.

The weaponisation of the law against rights violations on this scale in China is unprecedented. There has been only one other national protest, in 1989, since the post-Cultural Revolution re-establishment of China’s legal system. But the current movement benefits from four conditions that did not exist in 1989.

First, China’s legislations are by far the most comprehensive since the establishment of the People’s Republic. It now has 293 national laws, 598 administrative regulations and over 13,000 local decrees.

Second, China’s economic boom has created a solid middle class who act as a stabiliser during social turmoil. Four hundred million Chinese are considered middle-income. About 15.5 per cent of Chinese have a university degree, compared to 1.4 per cent in 1990.

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Third, China’s population of lawyers has proliferated – from 212 lawyers in 1979 to about 574,800 last year. Fourth, more than 989 million Chinese now use smartphones with social media apps. Under Xi Jinping’s increasingly techno-totalitarian regime, netizens have developed techniques for bypassing censorship and accessing verboten messages.

Beijing has been touting the rule of law in recent years, even elevating it to the focal point of the Communist Party’s 2014 plenary session. In most people’s experience, rule of law is only rhetoric. China’s efforts in legal education, along with economic growth, have created a buffer between the party and ordinary folk.

Although the government is ruthless in repressing some dissent, especially challenges to one-party leadership and the one-China policy, it tolerates narrower criticisms that are fact-specific and law-based. It has allowed the circulation of articles and blog posts teaching people how to talk to “Big Whites” to prevent arbitrary quarantine, and how to invoke legal provisions to keep children at home.

Workers in protective gear in a Beijing neighbourhood placed under Covid-19 lockdown on November 21. Photo: Bloomberg

As a result of the latter, Shanghai authorities revised their child-removal policies. The central government has even allowed arguments against the legality of using “Level A” pandemic restrictions to tackle a “Level B” epidemic disease.

Since the central government eased Covid-19 restrictions in recent weeks, people have used national guidelines to push back against local measures. One viral video clip shows a police officer in Beijing refusing a residential committee’s request to arrest unruly residents. He instead demands the residential committee show documentation proving the legality of their lockdown.

The number of Chinese with a solid legal background is still rapidly increasing. The Ministry of Justice’s new five-year plan forecasts 750,000 lawyers by 2025. If China can stabilise its economy and recover from the pandemic, its middle class will also continue to expand.

These well-educated and legally literate people can act as a crucial buffer in clashes between the masses and the party. They can also challenge the party to course-correct when their interests are at stake. Right now, they feel their life over the past three years have been taken away. They are turning to the law to get it back.

Chi Yin, a former judge in China, is now an operations manager and a research scholar at the US-Asia Law Institute of New York University School of Law