Students Perpetuate Protester's Words

Protest posters, Central Saint Martins, London

The fallout from Thursday's one-man protest has led to censorship in China as expected, while others outside the country carry on the mantle.

A man dressed in construction worker uniform lit a fire on Sitong Bridge in Haidian district in northwest Beijing, and unfurled white banners with red Chinese characters denouncing Xi Jinping as a dictator, expressing frustrations with the zero-Covid policy, and explicitly not calling for revolution but reforms. 

Pic of Thursday's protest

He did this just days before the twice-in-a-decade National Congress of the Communist Party of China, where Xi is expected to extend his rule for at least another five years, if not more.

Many in the middle class worry this means more of the same as the past 10 years and it's not the direction they want to go.

But this one-man protest was quickly snuffed out, with police arriving soon after to take down the banners and put the alleged protester into a car, where no one knows what has happened to him since.

However, his words live on.

Chinese students in various universities overseas have taken those protester's words and created posters they have put all over their respective campuses.

The tertiary institutions include: Stanford, The George Washington University, University of Glasgow, UNC Chapel Hill, University of Notre Dame, Amherst College, and McGill University.

These students on the outside have either experienced the extreme zero-Covid measures, or haven't been able to go home because of them, and have seen family and friends suffering from severe lockdowns and worry about them not only having enough to eat, but also their well-being from being isolated for so long.

Protest inspired posters like these

So it's no wonder they were inspired by this one-man protest and are continuing it outside China.

What has happened to to Sitong bridge man? No one knows but hopefully he will somehow find out his words have spread like weeds, organically sprouting everywhere. He has definitely helped openly sow the seeds of discontent. And for Xi to be deaf to these calls could be the end of him...