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If I saw an American holding a misspelled sign at a protest, the last thing I would think is that it must be a China. If there's any conspiracy, it'd be more likely that it is a domestic operation that is meant to make the protesters look stupid/uneducated. (I seem to recall, but I may be wrong, that some people holding up signs like "keep your government hands off my medicare" while protesting Obama were actually Democrats, but that was a long time ago, so I may be misremembering).
But the policies they are protesting are coming from the top. And even if they weren't, its not like people don't protest the feds when other levels of government are more responsible for the situation. The trucker protest in Canada was generally against covid restrictions, most of which were put in place by provincial governments, and a border vaccine mandate put in place by the US. But they still protested the Canadian federal government.
I don't think I've actually seen many protests demanding federal leaders resign, because in the west we CAN vote in a new leader. So if you were protesting in China, it seems like demanding a resignation of the leader would be the only real option, since voting ain't going to do it. I guess in parliamentary systems, since the leader isn't directly elected, calls for leaders to step down are a bit more common, especially since elections are irregular.
But the issue with zero COVID seems to come from the central government. Changing local leadership isn't going to solve things.
You'd think if this was a foreign operation that the police wouldn't be twiddling their thumbs. "Nah, we only suppress domestic, organic protests. We'll happily allow the CIA to undermine our country, though."
I think this is more evidence in favour of the protests being encouraged, at some level, by the CCP. Maybe as an excuse to change policy. Maybe to expose dissidents (and CIA networks). Maybe to frame anti-lockdown protestors the same way the western governments have. As outsiders we look at these people and think 'heroes'. But in the west, the average person has looked at anti-lockdown protestors as loons. Maybe the average Chinese person looks at these protestors like they are retarded rednecks endangering the lives of everyone around them. Because China is much more, uh, collective than the west (especially America).
Would any minorities in China do this? Minorities tend to be more likely to protest, since the majority tends to be well represented.
Didn't China pretty effectively dismantle CIA networks in their country a couple years back? Some conspiracy theories attributed it to Hillary's email server being compromised.
I could see the protests being any combination domestic and foreign, with the CCP leveraging them like politicians in any part of the world would. Could have been organic, and the CIA swooped in to fan the flames, and the CCP is tolerating it in order to gain intelligence on who is all involved and what their motivations are, and also trying to paint the protests as being astroturfed. Every team is in the game.
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