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Videos surfaced on Sunday night of a rare protest in Shanghai, the largest city in China, orchestrated by what appeared to be only two people, marching through the streets with a banner apparently honoring an anti-communist display illicitly hung in Beijing last week.
The protest bookends the Chinese Communist Party Congress, an event that occurs once every five years to choose which Party elites get coveted seats on the Politburo and its Steering Committee. The Congress began this year with a man later identified as physicist Peng Lifa hanging a banner over Beijing’s Sitong Bridge calling the totalitarian leader of the Communist Party, Xi Jinping, a “dictator” and “traitor.” Shanghai’s display appears to be the latest in a string of copycat incidents supporting Peng that has hit at least eight cities, mostly consisting of bathroom graffiti, as the Chinese government has installed cameras in nearly every other corner of the populated areas of the country.
Peng reportedly disguised himself as a construction worker to get on the bridge and started a small fire to attract attention to his banners before police apprehended him. His banners read, in part: “Don’t want PCR tests, want food; don’t want lockdowns, want freedom; don’t want lies, want respect; don’t want Cultural Revolution, want reform; don’t want dictator, want vote; don’t want [to be] slaves, but want we the people.”
The first line of the Chinese national anthem, which Beijing itself has censored when used against the regime online, translates to “Stand up! Those who refuse to be slaves!”
【北京闹市出现反习反封控、要求民主横额】
据大陆网民上载到社媒的照片，周四(13日)上午，在北京北三环四通桥上，有人挂上了一幅巨大横额 :
« 不要核酸要吃饭，不要封控要自由，不要谎言要尊严，不要文革要改革，不要领袖要选票，不做奴才做公民。”
而右边横额则写上 :
» 罢课罢工罢免独裁国贼习近平 » pic.twitter.com/qPR7H0WPj9
自由亚洲电台 (@RFA_Chinese) October 13, 2022
Police rapidly whisked Peng away from the scene; his status remains unknown at press time.
Chinese dissidents have begun referring to Peng as “Bridge Man,” a reference to “Tank Man,” an unknown Chinese citizen who famously stared down a row of tanks during the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.
The two individuals who staged the Shanghai protest, believed to have happened on Sunday, created a banner that read, simply, “Don’t Want ____ ; Want ____,” in the same format of Peng’s banners.
