White Paper Revolution in Nanjing University of Communication 2 Favorite 

Direct Cause: The event that on November 24, several people died in a fire in a residential building in Urumqi, Xinjiang province, due to delayed disaster relief due to the COVID-19 lockdown policy in China, and the indifference of the government towards the incident and the block of message.

Primary Cause: The three-year-long lockdown policy and the government’s excessive control over speech and thought led to social discontent.

Result: The action won support from colleges and universities in other cities and formed a frontline of protest, which set off a wave on the Internet and aroused attention nationwide and abroad.

On Nov 26, 2022, two students from Nanjing University of Communication stood in the campus all day, raising blank paper in their hands. Later, many students came and joined them, lighting with their phone flash, singing the national anthem and shouting loudly, “Long live the people. Rest in peace.” Their act was a direct protest against the government’s non-action in several casualty incidents resulting from the strict lockdown policy.

The white paper as a symbol reflects the government’s strict control and surveillance over people’s speech, and originated from a Soviet joke in which a man was arrested even though he didn’t write anything on the paper. The act is therefore a metaphor for an unfree political environment. It also satirizes the self-deceptive nature of the government’s effort on maintaining social stability and reveals it to more people, as the girl who initiated the act went missing later, although she wrote nothing. With no words written, the bonding between the participants is strengthened by a tacit common intention. It is a strategy shaped by both the confining political environment and emerging youth culture (Soviet jokes were popular online).