At the end of November 2022, protests against the Covid-zero policy, which had already started in the summer, spread in China, becoming a “political challenge”. Shouting “we don’t want PCR, we want freedom” and “open up the country”, young people and students, but also the well-to-do middle classes, staged rallies in towns such as Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Xi’an, Chengdu, Nanjing and Guangzhou, raising a serious dilemma for the authorities.

Analysts and observers, especially Westerners, predicted the beginning of the end of the regime, although the revolt did not discuss the deep foundations of the system, which since the 1990s has managed to create a legitimate space for contestation whose only red line is the questioning of the power and dissent.

Because for decades the society of the “economic miracle” has rebelled to protect its interests, whether they are public company workers fired for low profitability, peasants expelled from their land, apartment owners evicted by unscrupulous real estate agents or victims of pollution of the factories.

Before the pandemic, it was not uncommon to see pro-order citizens lash out at the state for its inability to enforce the law or call on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to defend the achievements of the people.

During the demonstrations against the Covid Zero policy, some voices attacked the party and its leader, Xi Jinping. Far from questioning the legitimacy of the regime, it has enjoyed the support of the population by virtue of the economic boom and the conviction that the party was synonymous with stability.

When the Covid Zero policy was abandoned at the end of December 2022 and a wave of infections was unleashed, not a few lamented the drift, longing for the time when everyone was subjected to repeated PCR tests and the State controlled the situation, emphasizing the paradox of a society ready to protest, although clinging to the the status quo.

But why? What legitimizes the Chinese regime in the eyes of its administrators? Firstly, we cannot fail to point out the extremely repressive dimension of the regime which, as occurs in other authoritarian systems, considerably increases the cost of participating in the contestation. The cultural track is also important, as the Chinese civilization is eminently conservative, imposing a disciplinary model on the new generations in which each individual is called upon to submit to the needs of the nation. The rise of the middle classes and the fear of seeing their achievements squander are another explanatory factor for the safeguarding of power.

Rise of the middle classes and protests

Since the late 1990s, Chinese society has changed. Since 1989, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has implemented capitalist norms and values ​​that, although of its own kindthey unleash the forces of the market, brandishing enrichment, property and individual success.

The country is commercialized, the Chinese integrate capitalist work, large public groups are created and, under the aegis of the authorities, private multinationals are formed, spearheading the country’s foreign projection.

The CCP consolidates its monopoly in exchange for the commitment to generate well-being and opportunities for social promotion. With high rates of growth sustained over time, the explosion of the rural exodus, the takeoff of higher education, economic diversification and job creation, large swaths of the population see their conditions improve substantially. The educated, owner, citizen and prudent middle classes burst in, willing to defend their recently conquered way of life and, by extension, are little inclined to adopt a democratic system, perceiving elections as a disruptive process, favoring corruption and decision-making slower.

The multiplication of social conflicts is an epiphenomenon of Chinese social progress. The middle classes do not hesitate to protest and even organize a response to low wages, terrible working conditions, low quality construction, confiscation of property or even the defense of the environment, and all in order to preserve their brand new standard of existence. Because the need to improve is intermingled with the anguish of declassification and hence the obsession with security, from which the preservation of the regime in contention emerges.

The PCCh has been able to read the situation and has contributed to the emergence of a legitimate space for contestation in which the protest is tolerated if it does not cross certain red lines, that is, if the conflict remains localized in well-determined issues and does not attack in in any way against the current system. Even if the apprehension of instability leads to repression, new formulas to guarantee social peace appear progressively, which include mediation and the more or less complete satisfaction of the protesters’ demands.

Likewise, the containment becomes more subtle, it is repressed in a limited way, identifying the leaders, dividing to better control, coopting and negotiating, the protesters graduating their reaction to the measures of power, temporizing if there is progress and going a little further if nothing moves. The dominance of the CCP does not hide changes in relation to government practices, the way in which authorities and citizens interact, including protests, although the movement is avoided at all times to become or appear “political”.

Limits of the legitimate contentious space

In the second half of the 2010s, the PCCh managed to stop certain advances in terms of the institutionalization of the contestation, at a time when intermediate organizations emerged to support certain types of claims and help the victims to train and organize. The authorities then rely on these organizations often started by intellectuals and party officials sensitive to certain issues.

Finally, power interrupts these initiatives, placing society in front of the party, without intermediary bodies, or associations, or unions, restricting the possibility of forming broad organized social movements. The goal is to anticipate social reactions and, eventually, not lose an iota of capacity when it comes to disabling them at a time when the CCP begins to worry about the country’s economic drift.

The manufacturing and real estate sectors, which had traditionally sustained growth, are sinking, and the tertiary and new technologies are far from supplying them, with wages and employment suffering, unemployment among the youngest being massive and structural problems worsening as a result of the pandemic .

Conflicts caused by the pandemic

The pandemic and its management have reduced conflicts, but have not made them disappear completely, even provoking violent opposition from some to their conditions of confinement, as happened in the spring of 2022 in Shanghai. Consumption was expected to boost growth to the detriment of investment and exports, but the authorities had not foreseen the employment and debt problems of the middle classes. In addition, if before education, health, pensions and accommodation were paid for by the State, capitalism through, now these concepts are charged to the workers, either totally or partially, threatening the way of life of the middle classes.

Unwilling to lose its increasingly fragile gains, Chinese society seems unwilling at the moment to promote a regime-wide motion. However, the PCCh is called upon to favor negotiations with society in a much less comfortable context than that of a few years ago. Is this a viable model? Nothing is less secure.

David Alvarado, Professor of Geopolitics and Geoeconomics, UNIR – International University of La Rioja

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.