{"id":7895,"date":"2022-10-24T23:17:43","date_gmt":"2022-10-25T03:17:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tempestmag.org\/v01_2020\/staging\/?p=7895"},"modified":"2022-11-08T17:00:29","modified_gmt":"2022-11-08T22:00:29","slug":"courage-at-sitong-bridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2022\/10\/courage-at-sitong-bridge\/","title":{"rendered":"Courage at Sitong Bridge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"dropcap\">I<\/span>n a rare display of dissent just days before the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), a man disguised as a construction worker hung banners on October 13 with provocative political slogans\u2014calling on the masses to strike at work and at school\u2014from a busy intersection on the Sitong Bridge in Beijing. One read \u201cWe want food, not PCR tests. We want freedom, not lockdowns. We want respect, not lies. We want reform, not Cultural Revolution. We want a vote, not a leader. We want to be citizens, not slaves.\u201d The other said, \u201cStrike at school and strike at work,\u201d and attacked the head of state itself: \u201cOust the dictator, traitor Xi Jinping.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Online users quickly discovered the protester\u2019s identity as Peng Lifa, a researcher of electrophysics who had posted some of his demands online days prior to his public protest. These demands were excerpted from a larger document that he has allegedly posted on Researchgate under the name \u2018Peng Zaizhou\u2019 (now deleted but <a href=\"https:\/\/pincong.rocks\/question\/50606\">archived<\/a> by online users on a different site), which details an extensive strategy for mobilization and a more concrete vision for political reform.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pullquote\">People in China are reproducing Peng\u2019s demands against Xi and for mass action by scribbling on public bathroom walls, with strangers Airdropping each other dissident messages on the streets.<\/aside>\n<p>Peng\u2019s protest came at a critical juncture for the CCP. Xi was eager to consolidate his third term in power at the party\u2019s national congress this year and potentially identify a new cohort of leadership. The congress obliged, helping Xi take his authority to new heights by electing a Politburo Standing Committee composed entirely of his loyalists.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, China\u2019s pandemic strategy has seen mixed results, as its draconian quarantine measures have triggered discontent while its larger economic policy has deepened exploitation of everyday workers and shown signs of slowdown and other weakness. Many college graduates are unemployed, as China\u2019s precarious gig economy has massively ballooned in recent years. Xi and the party elites are all the more keen to preserve political stability despite these social contradictions. Peng\u2019s protest, though small in scale, disrupted the regime\u2019s intention to completely regulate dissent on the eve of the national congress.<\/p>\n<p>Within a week of Peng\u2019s brief act of dissent, anonymous Chinese overseas students and other diaspora allies have shown solidarity by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vice.com\/en\/article\/wxn7nq\/anti-xi-jinping-posters-are-spreading-in-china-via-airdrop\">creating<\/a> posters and other graphics to amplify Peng\u2019s demands and plastering them in over 250 universities and other public areas around the world. People in China are reproducing Peng\u2019s demands against Xi and for mass action by scribbling on public bathroom walls, with strangers Airdropping each other dissident messages on the streets. These are no pre-revolutionary conditions, of course, but this level of reaction is not only rare, but testifies to the fact that his calls for popular strikes in civil society to mobilize the masses against authoritarianism rule have struck an important nerve.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_7906\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7906\" style=\"width: 1000px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-7906 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Xi-Jinping.jpeg\" alt=\"A photo of Chinese leader Xi-Jinping at a podium next to the Chinese flag, red with yellow stars\" width=\"1000\" height=\"714\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Xi-Jinping.jpeg 1000w, https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Xi-Jinping-600x428.jpeg 600w, https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Xi-Jinping-300x214.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Xi-Jinping-768x548.jpeg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-7906\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u201cOust the dictator, traitor Xi Jinping.\u201d UN <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/unisgeneva\/32270494731\">Photo<\/a> by Jean-Marc Ferr\u00e9.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>While Peng\u2019s framework contains important contradictions that we must unpack, his key demands are a crucial step that must be amplified by the Left in the short term: to oppose Xi\u2019s attempt to rule beyond term limits through the mobilization of a popular mass movement. Only mass mobilization of civil society can open up the space to build an independent socialist mass opposition, which centers on bridging the minimum demands adequately raised by Peng and the maximum demand of building genuine institutions of socialist democracy against authoritarian capital.<\/p>\n<h4>Peng\u2019s vision and strategy<\/h4>\n<p>Peng\u2019s document begins with a clear exposition of his strategy and political vision. He identifies Xi\u2019s dictatorial rule\u2014which he likens to Chinese warlord Yuan Shikai\u2019s usurpation of Kuomintang rule in the early 20th-century\u2014as a key problem. And thus, civil society needs to rise up en masse, from universities to workplaces, to \u201cexert pressure\u201d on the regime to oppose Xi\u2019s rule. A political alternative would be centered on expanding suffrage in order to best safeguard the rights and livelihoods of Chinese people. Peng also emphasizes that those in \u201clower society\u201d must be empowered, providing a lengthy list of whom he considers the protagonists of this campaign: unemployed people (including young college graduates who cannot find jobs), migrant workers, those who cannot afford medical services, service workers, those who have faced eviction, etc.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to classroom and workplace strikes, he advocates a series of tactics that include various nonviolent direct actions, from setting up roadblocks to plastering the demands throughout the city. He calls on people to spread the demands in social media networks\u2014even government internal communication networks\u2014and to surround the CGTN office and occupy Tiananmen Square.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pullquote\">[Peng Lifa\u2019s] commitment to popular struggle pushes beyond the traditional consensus among Chinese dissidents, which privileges Western establishment intervention over the independent activity of the Chinese masses.<\/aside>\n<p>The framework of struggle is an eclectic mixture of reformist strategies. Peng never calls for the end of CCP rule in the document, but develops structures for reforms that would, in his view, democratize CCP rule. Some policy proposals are highly specific: He includes a proposal for a \u201cPeople\u2019s Republic of China National Suffrage Committee\u201d that would ensure democratic participation in elections, roughly modeled after liberal democracies. For Peng, this process would be easily doable with a technical reform. The regime could simply repurpose the extensive network of COVID testing sites as voting stations. The document lists other specific pandemic policies that would grant more flexibility to everyday people, and even develops a sample spending budget proposal at one point.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_7907\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7907\" style=\"width: 1006px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-7907 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Beijing-covid-testing-site-2.jpeg\" alt=\"Image of an office building, the COVID testing site in Beijing, in winter\" width=\"1006\" height=\"511\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Beijing-covid-testing-site-2.jpeg 1006w, https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Beijing-covid-testing-site-2-600x305.jpeg 600w, https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Beijing-covid-testing-site-2-300x152.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Beijing-covid-testing-site-2-768x390.jpeg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1006px) 100vw, 1006px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-7907\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Peng Lifa\u2019s manifesto suggests repurposing the network of COVID testing sites as voting stations. Pictured here: a testing site in Beijing. <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:COVID-19_testing_site_next_to_Wangjing_SOHO,_Chaoyang_District,_Beijing,_China,_20201228.JPG\">Photo<\/a> by TurnOnTheNight.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>For the Left, much is still left wanting in the program, but we must be clear that any further demands for the expansion of workers\u2019 power and democracy can only be built on an energized civil society and mass movement\u2014a point that Peng clearly observes and attempts to address. Even as Peng still operates within the framework of liberalism, citing the texts of late right-wing dissident Liu Xiaobo and \u201ccolor revolution\u201d advocates and calling for the safeguarding of the market economy, his desire to stimulate mass action opens up new opportunities for struggle for the Left. Such a commitment to popular struggle pushes beyond the traditional consensus among Chinese dissidents, which privileges Western establishment intervention over the independent activity of the Chinese masses.<\/p>\n<h4>Strengths and limits of Peng\u2019s vision<\/h4>\n<p>As such, we must clearly amplify the strengths and identify the weaknesses in Peng\u2019s text. While document\u2019s political framework is limited and fragmented\u2014calling for policies that may even be endorsed by liberal reformers loyal to the party itself\u2014it correctly recognizes the struggles of workers during the pandemic and the need for their voices to be heard in pushing for a more democratic system of representation.<\/p>\n<p>Directly criticizing Xi\u2019s unaccountable leadership even within the already-degenerated rule of law under the CCP provides an effective rallying point to begin stirring the discontents of the Chinese people into some form of mass action. The demand may seem rather basic, but we must remember how far removed Chinese society has been from experiencing any form of mass organization on a national scale. Socialist demands are but a maximization of the masses\u2019 capacity for collective self-determination to build democratic institutions, so our demands for further revolutionary transformation must emerge from and in concert with a broader mass movement resisting the most basic violations of the rule of law.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pullquote\">At the center of Peng\u2019s strategy is his call for a national strike from the workplace to the classroom.<\/aside>\n<p>Indeed, Peng\u2019s vision of democracy leaves the class hierarchy of Chinese society, as structured by the CCP, fundamentally untouched. In other words, it identifies the core issues of Chinese society only in part, and thus, can only offer an ultimately ineffectual political solution in the long run. The authoritarian and bureaucratic structure of the CCP is powered by capital accumulation; in other words, the political organization of society is built upon a strict division of labor and an autocratic surveillance infrastructure meant to reinforce one another. Genuine democratic representation cannot exist within the mold of CCP governance, and electoral reforms without changes to the political power of the ruling class would miss the point: that under the logic of market economics, people cannot be empowered to collectively plan and re-organize society along the principles of freedom and self-determination, and to actually prioritize the needs and well-being of the community over profit.<\/p>\n<p>Peng\u2019s technocratic solution to maximizing democracy by repurposing the extensive networks of COVID testing reveals two crucial things. His proposal correctly suggests that China\u2019s current level of modernization and productive capacity already makes a highly developed system of democratic governance possible on a mass scale. On the other hand, what Peng does not grasp is that genuine democracy cannot emerge as a technical reform in a system of governance fundamentally built to deprioritize the needs of the laboring masses for the benefits of a ruling class.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pullquote\">The quick response of Chinese overseas students to echo and build upon on Peng\u2019s demands internationally \u2026 testifies to the potential of youth and student power to help develop an independent mass opposition with the Chinese working class.<\/aside>\n<p>Nonetheless, Peng\u2019s proposal that all sectors of civil society must be mobilized to occasion change opens up space for the masses to organize for these more radical demands. From that point, we must ask further clarifying questions. How ought we build connections between these forces in civil society to build a successful movement? Which forces should lead and what kinds of political program is needed to deepen the movement? What forms of institutions and organizations are necessary to coordinate and ensure space for democratic assembly and debate on larger strategic questions between different sectors of the movement? At the center of Peng\u2019s strategy is his call for a national strike from the workplace to the classroom. This targeting of the country\u2019s productive capacities adequately reflects the growing awareness of Chinese workers\u2019 power as a class in an economy that is more proletarianized than ever before. Youth unemployment has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2022-08-15\/china-youth-jobless-rate-hits-record-20-in-july-on-covid-woes\">soared<\/a> to a record 20 percent of the workforce in July, and the last few years under the pandemic have seen a massive <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dsb.cn\/145352.html\">expansion<\/a> of the gig economy.<\/p>\n<p>Whereas the workers and students during the Tiananmen movement of 1989 saw only a tepid and uneasy alliance at best, Peng readily draws links between the two. \u201cTo strike at work and at school\u201d have become two aspects of the same strategy. As a key site of social reproduction of labor, the school is integrally linked to the country\u2019s productive capacities, such that student and workers\u2019 strikes should be seen in the same continuum of struggle against the commodity economy. The quick response of Chinese overseas students to echo and build upon on Peng\u2019s demands internationally across cities and university campuses further testifies to the potential of youth and student power to help develop an independent mass opposition with the Chinese working class.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_7908\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7908\" style=\"width: 1000px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-7908 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Migrant-construction-worker.jpeg\" alt=\"Image of a Chinese worker with several others amid construction debris, holding bowls of green beans and rice\" width=\"1000\" height=\"680\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Migrant-construction-worker.jpeg 1000w, https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Migrant-construction-worker-600x408.jpeg 600w, https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Migrant-construction-worker-300x204.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Migrant-construction-worker-768x522.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Migrant-construction-worker-700x476.jpeg 700w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-7908\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u201cPeng\u2019s vision of democracy leaves the class hierarchy of Chinese society, as structured by the CCP, fundamentally untouched.\u201d Migrant construction workers generally live on the job site. Here, workers in Beijing take a meal break. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/iloasiapacific\/29372983014\">Photo<\/a> by ILO.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>But Peng\u2019s version of this strategy is in need of a more rigorous programmatic vision of revolution, in which political power would be seized by workers set to reorganize how Chinese society\u2019s production relations are structured. Contrast Peng\u2019s key demands to those of Beijing\u2019s Workers Autonomous Federation (WAF) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/world\/tiananmen-square-massacre-workers\/\">workers<\/a> in 1989: \u201cthe WAF\u2019s pamphlets at the time accused the CCP of hijacking the people\u2019s authority to manage their own economic resources, and demanded that the CCP must cede power to the workers to determine the course of the country\u2019s productive industries.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In other words, genuine democracy must entail the working class seizing power, beyond calling for technocratic adjustments that leave the core of the society\u2019s economic structure untouched. And such a kind of \u201cproletarian dictatorship\u201d does not center on one-party rule of any kind, but instead\u2014in the words of some Tiananmen workers themselves in an interview with Hong Kong Trotskyist publication October Review\u2014\u201cmust be based on an adequate democratic structure and legal system.\u201d In contrast, Peng\u2019s awkward deference to color revolution as a strategic framework to mobilize the masses reveals the narrowness of political horizon in Chinese society.<\/p>\n<p>The Tiananmen workers never got their chance to concretely realize their vision of political democracy, and indeed, the CCP has always been <a href=\"https:\/\/spectrejournal.com\/what-was-chinese-trotskyism\/\">keen<\/a> to smother any alternative programs for socialist democracy from developing out of the masses. It has worked in the party\u2019s favor to reduce people\u2019s political options into mere variants of a false dichotomy: either liberal demands for Western intervention or Western-style bourgeois democracies, or reformist opposition operating loyally within the party\u2019s institutional apparatuses. Peng\u2019s manifesto does not fully provide us with a coherent third path, but paves the way for something like it to emerge by emboldening the self-activity of the masses. He hesitates to call for any radical action against the authority of the party itself, while drawing unevenly from Western color revolution methods and preserving the logic of market accumulation.<\/p>\n<p>Peng\u2019s document nonetheless provides us with a first step forward, and now we must build upon it to keep catalyzing spaces for mass action and practice collective organization to develop programmatic clarity. Only then can we create new modes of struggle in a society with few opportunities to practice mass mobilization and organization on a national scale (beyond spontaneous upsurges), against the surveilling and co-opting infrastructure of the state.<\/p>\n<h4>Building the movement we need<\/h4>\n<p>To effectively build on Peng\u2019s dissent requires organically developing more Chinese workers and students as organizers in their community\u2014locally and in the diaspora\u2014to energize mass engagement to collectively build new programs for socialist democracy. This core of organizers should not rush to compel people into party-building or other forms of militant action in the short term that would surely quicken government clampdown. Instead, they can cultivate the working class\u2019s political consciousness by intentionally bringing together politically advanced members of their community to synthesize the lessons of different local, national, or diaspora struggles.<\/p>\n<p>We must not mistake Peng\u2019s protest and the growing discontent of Chinese workers as a sign that the time is now ripe for immediate revolutionary struggle. The historically unprecedented scale of CCP\u2019s surveillance state, coupled with the political incoherence of the Chinese working class, suggest the need for transitional programs and demands. Working-class forces are in a similar situation today as the decimation of the Chinese communists by the Kuomintang in the late 1920s\u2014a terrain of growing social contradictions though with highly adverse conditions for organizing. And thus, as Leon Trotsky <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/trotsky\/1932\/pcr\/08.htm\">reflected<\/a> at the time, we must focus on \u201cfighting at present not for power, but to maintain, to consolidate and to develop its contact with the masses for the sake of the struggle for power in the future.\u201d Transitional demands encourages Chinese workers and students to sharpen their own political analyses and practice exercising power by raising demands that can connect to broad masses of Chinese society while exposing the limits of the Chinese political system\u2019s contradictions. This can include pressing beyond Peng\u2019s demands to articulate the need for fully-elected local and national assemblies for decision-making, democratically representing workers and other dispossessed elements of Chinese society\u2014including the full right to self-determination for Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong-Kongers, and other minorities.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pullquote\">The historically unprecedented scale of CCP\u2019s surveillance state, coupled with the political incoherence of the Chinese working class, suggest the need for transitional programs and demands.<\/aside>\n<p>We can further build on Peng\u2019s document to directly introduce demands that center on broadening workers\u2019 independent power, like calling for the right to form independent unions and other organs of dual power, which presses against the limits of liberal constitutionalism partially expressed by Peng. Thus, Peng\u2019s program to unleash mass action to restore some of the basic democratic freedoms in China can make space for socialists to promote transitional <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/mandel\/1976\/xx\/revstrateur.htm\">demands<\/a> that, as Ernest Mandel illustrates, \u201callow the masses to learn, through their own experience, the extension of their own freedom comes up against the restrictive institutions of bourgeois democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Such a nucleus of socialist organizers would not seek to centralize different sectors of society into its one organization\u2019s ranks, but as Mandel also <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/mandel\/196x\/leninism\/ch03.htm\">writes<\/a>, exist simply to crystallize the political consciousness of the masses \u201cin a process of continuous organisation.\u201d Again, we must look to the lessons of the past. Zhang Yueran, in his incisive reflection critically reflecting on the role of Maoist student organizers in the JASIC workers\u2019 struggle in 2018, <a href=\"https:\/\/madeinchinajournal.com\/2020\/06\/25\/leninists-in-a-chinese-factory\/\">remarked<\/a> that more crucial than consolidating a party vanguard at the moment, Chinese organizers should not lose focus on strengthening \u201cthe organisational capacity of workers.\u201d Developing rigorous and cohesive political programs should not work in lieu of helping to expand the \u201cnecessary organisational capacity for workers to take massive action as on making sure workers\u2019 struggle unfolds in the correct political direction, under the guidance of revolutionary theory.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pullquote\">A genuine socialist program for change should model the very institutions and practices of democracy we want in the road to revolution itself.<\/aside>\n<p>Revolutionary socialist democracy in China can only be institutionalized and won by the masses adopting such an organizational praxis from the start. \u201cSeven Theses on Socialism and Democracy,\u201d written in exile in 1957 by Chinese Marxist Wang Fanxi, formulates a vision for revolutionary democracy in China. A genuine \u201cproletarian dictatorship\u201d requires a \u201csystem of divided power\u201d that recognizes the right for \u201copposition parties\u201d and other organized forces to exist. Workers\u2019 power would not be centralized in one party, let alone one party-state, and \u201cmust under no circumstances replace the political power democratically elected by the toilers as a whole.\u201d This entails<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;an end to the present system in the Communist countries, where government is a facade behind which secretaries of the party branches assume command. The ruling party\u2019s strategic policies must first be discussed and approved by an empowered parliament (or soviet) that includes opposition parties and factions, and only then should they be implemented by government.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is no utopian program for after the revolution, but a reality that would only dialectically emerge from the cultivated practice and organizational capacity of everyday people\u2019s struggle in response to the forces of authoritarian capital right now. In other words, we must build a revolutionary nucleus of organizers to continually push for socialist perspectives in the movement, alongside, not in place of, empowering a diverse array of other independent mass organizations in coalition with one another, including workers\u2019 organizations, LGBTQ+ student groups, feminist collectives, diaspora groups, among others. And thus, a genuine socialist program for change should model the very institutions and practices of democracy we want in the road to revolution itself.<\/p>\n<p>And so, the task today is to quicken and build the mass mobilization that Peng demands, and as Students for Hong Kong <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Students-For-Hong-Kong-109351401471657\/photos\/pcb.197327722674024\/197327626007367\">encourages<\/a> in their recent statement, \u201ccreate more spaces for independent assembly and discussion \u2026 to continue spreading this fire of liberty.\u201d Diaspora activists have an outsized role to play in helping to facilitate and build such spaces, especially filling in the kinds of organizational infrastructure that would be too risky to build and maintain in the mainland. We can keep promoting spaces for exchange and coalition-building, continuing to build a base of people in civil society who can eventually mobilize in the scale that Peng imagines in his document\u2014and more.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"half\" \/>\n<p>Wang Fanxi\u2019s \u201cSeven Theses on Socialism and Democracy\u201d is available in the Haymarket collection of Fanxi\u2019s writings, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.haymarketbooks.org\/books\/1639-mao-zedong-thought\">Mao Zedong Thought<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><small><em>Featured Image Credit: Photo by <a href=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/f\/f8\/Jasmine_Revolution_in_China_-_Beijing_11_02_20_crowd.jpg\">Wikimedia Commons<\/a>; modified by Tempest.<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Peng Lifa disappeared into the clutches of Chinese security forces in Beijing after he unfurled banners off a bridge with slogans attacking the autocracy of President Xi Jinping. But his daring act\u2014and his manifesto calling for mass action to achieve democracy\u2014have stirred hope for change and a discussion of strategy among Chinese on the mainland and around the world. <strong>Ruo Yan<\/strong> joins the discussion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":191,"featured_media":7911,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[265],"class_list":["post-7895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article","tag-china"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/sitong_bridge.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/191"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}