为何白纸运动在海外销声匿迹？Why Has the White Paper Movement Fallen Silent Overseas?

2022年11月底，中国各地爆发了声势浩大的白纸运动，在某种程度上促使中国政府结束了长达三年、造成无数人间悲剧的动态清零政策。白纸运动本应是中国当代社会运动的成功范例。然而，三年后的今天，白纸运动却沦为了一小部分参与者喝酒怀旧的小规模纪念活动，白纸的符号不仅在几乎任何白纸运动周年纪念以外的活动上缺席，没有像以六四运动为代表的老一辈民运那样持续在海外发酵，甚至就连白纸运动本身与中国政府终结动态清零之间的关系也遭到了怀疑。在白纸运动三周年之际，我们试图分析这次本可以成为典范的社会运动为何在短短三年时间内销声匿迹。

从事实上讲，白纸运动是一个实现了抗议诉求的运动，是一个完成了其历史使命的运动。这恐怕是其功成身退的根本原因。白纸运动实现了它“结束动态清零”的核心诉求，这个在整个中共建政后的历史上都是比较少见的，或许只有四五运动可以勉强媲美。白纸运动的核心诉求就是结束动态清零，中国政府确实也很快结束了动态清零——尽管是以一种非常蠢、代价非常大的方式。这个时间上的先后顺序——无论是否构成因果——总归是形成了这样的叙事：白纸运动爆发，动态清零结束。这就导致了一个后果：诉求实现了，还接着搞什么呢？六四运动被镇压了，中共还在那摆着，老一辈民运自然要继续运动，直到诉求实现，或者他们自己放弃为止。一个人在中国驻外使领馆门前喊一句“打倒共产党”，别人自然都知道他要干什么。可是白纸运动的诉求已经实现了，市民们要求结束动态清零，中国政府确实结束了动态清零，他们还有什么理由继续下去呢？在2025年喊一句“不要核酸要吃饭”，除了纪念彭载舟先生外，即使单纯作为口号都已经没有任何的现实意义了。“清零”这个概念已经中国政府从人们的历史记忆中抹除了，而“1989年春夏之交的政治风波”却不得不在教科书上为中学生们打开一道探知历史真相的窗口。

有人会疑问，白纸运动过程中，上海有人喊出“共产党下台、习近平下台”，现在他们还在台上好好的，怎么能说白纸运动的诉求实现了呢？这里我们就要区分抗议运动的诉求和运动过程中偶然喊出的口号的区别。比如，六四运动中，有人朝天安门的毛泽东头像泼油漆，结果被学运成员给扭送到了公安局。也就是上海人比较开明，才没有把喊出“两个下台”的人当场揍一顿。根据现场视频，我们明显发现，“共产党下台、习近平下台”的应和声是远远小于其他口号的，北京的白纸运动现场甚至在唱国歌和国际歌。这样的运动，绝不能说其诉求中包含了共产党和习近平下台，而只能描述这样一个事实：白纸运动的参与者中有人希望共产党和习近平下台。

我们同样不能忽视的是，白纸运动是一场以市民群体为核心参与者的政治运动。虽然最早举起白纸的是大学生，可是后来上街抗议的都是市民。原因很简单：大学生当时都被关在学校里出不去。这和以大学生为参与主体、市民工人群众打辅助的六四是截然不同的。市民相比于大学生，最突出的特点的软肋多：有工作有收入，上有老下有小，或者至少有个男女朋友，如果是北京、上海本地人，那还有一堆宅子和产业。我们不可能要求或者奢望他们放弃这些生活，去跟一穷二白的大学生一样继续革命，这是不现实的，穿鞋的人跟光脚的人就是有本质区别。以市民为参与主体还意味着，抗议者最终的诉求是安稳过日子。即使我们假设，白纸运动有两个独立诉求，分别是结束清零和共产党下台，对市民而言，如果结束清零足以让他们安稳一段日子，那他们也就很难再去追求一个更完美的结果。

白纸运动无法在海外持续发展的另一个原因是，白纸运动参与者的社会地位、组织能力、经济实力与六四一代仍有较大差距。当我们说白纸一代是更年轻、更开明、组织更先进的一代时，这句话本身并没有错。然而这种优越性更多体现在，对中共和中国文化的反思更彻底，对西方先进思想文化的接受程度更高，更愿意接受一种去中心化的组织形式，更没有老一辈民运人士那种近似油腻中年的特质。这些固然都是很好的，也预示着江山代有才人出，新一代民运人也该走上历史舞台了。

但是他们在很多方面都还跟老一辈民运人有差距。很典型的一点是，以“李老师不是你老师”为代表的这些所谓“误入历史”白纸一代，他们在知识水平、社会地位、经济实力上，跟1989年的北京大学生完全没法比。尤其是，去中心化的组织形式掩盖了白纸一代在组织能力和社会阅历上的不足，使得他们组织起来的社会运动的声势和规模并没有准确反映他们实际的社会地位。同时，不是所有的活动都适合以去中心化模式进行的，如果要在美国国会、英国议会，联合国人权理事会去组织发言，揭露中共的暴行，去中心化有什么用？理智的选择当然是要全力捧出来几个领袖，让白纸一代的声音被听到，有上得了牌桌的资格。做出“李老师”这样的流量，被提名诺贝尔和平奖，这正是不坚持去中心化、形成以“李老师”为流量中心的作用和效果。

时代也在变化。1989年的中国异议人士，确实拥有在他们那个年代可以称之为“先进”的知识、能力、思想，并且赶上了中国迅速发展的年代。他们即使受到中共迫害，坐几年牢，出来后仍然可以成为时代的领先者。现在不一样了，白纸运动参与者进派出所呆两个晚上，直接丢掉工作，生活都没有保障了，护照也被注销了，即使逃出中国也要为合法居留身份而奔波，他们还怎么接着推翻习近平、推翻共产党呢？

时代的变化还体现在中共对于海外民运的处理态度的变化。在从前，中共其实有两个基本的处理方针，一是你愿意走的不强留（刘晓波这种级别除外），在国外做民运不要碍事。因此，客观上，这种处理原则给老一代民运人士在国外的发展留下了一定空间，等到当代再想遏制，中国政府发现民运已经发展壮大了，按不住了。但是现在，由于社会管控的精细化，以及中国政府采取的这种不允许异议人士前往海外发展的政策，加之中国政府长期地对海外组织进行渗透和破坏，白纸运动这样新出来的群体，便失去了在初期发展的机会。白纸运动在海外成长不起来，也就不足为奇了。

其实，我们客观地讲，白纸运动究竟是不是结束动态清零的主要推手，是很成疑问的。以北京为例，2022年的北京从四五月份开始，基本就维持了每48小时测核酸的频率。据统计，在北京市在 2022 年中后期每 48 小时开展常态化核酸检测的政策背景下，基于全国一二线城市政策费用估算，北京全年由政府承担的核酸检测支出约在2000至2500 亿元人民币区间内。这个费用对财大气粗的北京来说，似乎还是可以承受的。但是很多人忽略了一个问题，北京也好，全国各地也罢，社区的核酸检测点都是混检模式。混检就是采集10个人甚至20个人的咽拭子样本，放在同一管试剂内。测出阴性，就认为这十个人二十个人都阴性，如果出现阳性，再把这些人叫来单独测试。这当然是为了节约成本。可这种方法为何会行之有效呢？是因为在年底前，阳性检出率是非常低的，客观的情况和科学规律允许用这种方法来节约成本。可是到了11月，每个单元甚至每个楼层都有人检出阳性之后，每一管混检都是阳性，这个方法就没用了。这样，就只能一人一管，预计支出就要达到原有的10倍、20倍，也就是2.5万亿、5万亿，其他城市也一样。这就不是中国政府能够承受的了。

所以，2022年11月底中共开始解除封控，一个经典的叙事是，乌鲁木齐大火引发了全国愤怒，继而各地纷纷开始了白纸运动，中国政府迫于形势和压力，主动解封。这是中国民间抗议的罕见胜利。但其实，如果我们仔细观察，就会发现，这个叙事如果不是完全虚构的，至少也是片面的。因为早在白纸运动之前，奥密克戎疯狂传播，10管20管混检进行不下去，疫情封控体系的基本支撑——48小时核酸检测——的支出眼看着要增加十倍二十倍的时候，中国政府便已经无力维持这个疫情封控制度了。乌鲁木齐大火、白纸运动，这一切不过是加速了中国政府的决策速度罢了。

这当然不是为了抹杀白纸运动的功绩，或者贬低白纸运动的历史地位。白纸运动的参与者们普遍还青春年少，大可不必将自己的一生用一次发生在自己二十岁或二十五岁时的社会运动去定义。借用赵紫阳对天安门广场上的学生的告诫：“你们还年轻，来日方长”。海外的自由世界，是比乌鲁木齐中路和亮马河更为广阔的天地，如果白纸运动未能如愿成为新时代的民主运动标杆，白纸运动的年轻参与者们，完全有能力在自由世界进行更波澜壮阔的社会运动。我们衷心希望人们能够铭记白纸运动，以及那些年轻人们为全体中国人的基本自由而呼喊的背影；我们也衷心希望，新时代的民主运动，不被局限在一张白纸上。

Why Has the White Paper Movement Fallen Silent Overseas?

By Timothy Huang

At the end of November 2022, the White Paper Movement erupted across China with impressive force and, to some extent, helped push the Chinese Government to abandon its three-year-long ‘dynamic zero-Covid’ policy – a policy that had caused countless human tragedies. By any reasonable standard, the White Paper Movement should stand as a successful example of a contemporary Chinese social movement. Yet three years on, it has dwindled into small-scale commemorations where a handful of former participants drink and reminisce. The symbol of the blank sheet of paper is almost entirely absent from political events outside the anniversaries, has failed to continue fermenting overseas in the way the 1989 democracy movement did, and even the link between the movement itself and the end of dynamic zero-Covid has been called into question. On the third anniversary of the White Paper Movement, this article seeks to understand why a protest that might have become a model has faded from view in such a short time.

        Strictly speaking, the White Paper Movement was a protest that saw its deman ds fulfilled and thus completed its historical mission. This is probably the fundamental reason why it could withdraw once its work was done. The movement’s core demand – an end to dynamic zero-Covid – was in fact achieved. In the entire history of the People’s Republic of China, this is rare; perhaps only the April Fifth Movement offers a rough parallel. The White Paper Movement’s central demand was to terminate dynamic zero-Covid, and the Chinese Government did indeed end the policy – albeit in a deeply foolish way and at enormous cost. Whatever the precise causal chain, the sequence of events made it hard to resist a simple narrative: the White Paper Movement broke out, and dynamic zero-Covid was scrapped. That in turn produced a very practical problem: if the demand has been met, what is there left to do? The 1989 movement was crushed, the Communist Party remained in power, and so the older generation of democracy activists naturally kept going until their demands were met – or until they themselves gave up. If someone stands outside a Chinese embassy or consulate today and shouts ‘Down with the Communist Party!’, everyone immediately understands what they are about. But the demands of the White Paper Movement have already been fulfilled. Citizens called for an end to dynamic zero-Covid and the Government duly ended it. On what grounds are they supposed to go on? To shout ‘We don't want nucleic acid testing, we want food to eat!’ in 2025 is, beyond commemorating Mr Peng Zaizhou, devoid of real meaning even as a slogan. The very notion of ‘zero-Covid’ has been rubbed out of public memory by the Chinese state, whereas ‘the political disturbances of spring and summer 1989’ still have to be mentioned in textbooks, inadvertently opening a small window through which schoolchildren can seek out the truth about that chapter of history.

        Some will object that, during the White Paper Movement, people in Shanghai shouted ‘Down with the Communist Party, down with Xi Jinping’, and since both remain firmly in place, how can we say the movement’s demands were fulfilled? To answer that, we must distinguish between the actual demands of a protest and the chance slogans shouted at particular moments. During the 1989 movement, for example, some protesters splashed paint on Mao Zedong’s portrait on Tiananmen Gate, only to be promptly handed over to the police by fellow student activists. It was probably only because Shanghai residents are relatively liberal-minded that no one beat up those shouting the ‘two step-downs’ on the spot. Footage from the scene shows clearly that the chants demanding the Party and Xi step down received far fewer echoes than other slogans. In Beijing, people at White Paper gatherings even sang the national anthem and the Internationale. A movement of this sort cannot seriously be described as having regime change as one of its formal demands. At most, we can record a simple fact: some participants in the White Paper Movement wanted the Communist Party and Xi Jinping to step down.

        We should also note that the White Paper Movement was a political protest in which the core participants were ordinary urban residents. Students were the first to hold up blank sheets of paper, but the people who later took to the streets were overwhelmingly city-dwellers. The reason is straightforward: at the time, students were locked inside their campuses and could not get out. This is completely different from 1989, when university students were the main force and citizens and workers played a supporting role. Compared with students, urban residents have far more to lose: jobs, income, elderly parents, young children, at the very least a boyfriend or girlfriend – and if they happened to be locals in Beijing or Shanghai, flats and businesses as well. It is neither fair nor realistic to expect them to abandon such lives and, like penniless students, keep on ‘making revolution’. Those who wear shoes and those who go barefoot are in fundamentally different positions. When urban residents are the main protagonists, their ultimate demand is simply to get on with their lives in peace. Even if we assume that the White Paper Movement had two distinct demands – an end to zero-Covid and the removal of the Communist Party – for ordinary city-dwellers, once the end of zero-Covid was enough to bring some respite, they had little reason to push on towards a more perfect outcome.

        Another reason why the White Paper Movement has not taken root overseas lies in the social standing, organisational capacity and economic resources of its participants, which still lag well behind those of the 1989 generation. We often say that the ‘White Paper Generation’ is younger, more open-minded and more organisationally advanced than its predecessors. There is nothing wrong with that statement. Their advantages lie chiefly in a more thorough-going critique of the Communist Party and of Chinese culture; greater openness to modern Western thought and culture; a readiness to work in decentralised forms; and the absence of the slightly greasy, middle-aged quality that clings to some older figures in the democracy movement. All of this is clearly positive. It suggests that new talent is indeed coming through and that a new generation of activists ought to be stepping onto the historical stage.

        Yet in many respects they still fall short of their elders. A very telling example is the group around ‘Teacher Li Is Not Your Teacher’ and other core figures of the so-called ‘accidentally historic’ White Paper Generation. In terms of knowledge, social status, and financial resources, they simply cannot be compared with university students in Beijing in 1989. Decentralised models of organisation also conceal the generation’s lack of experience and organising skill, so that the scale and momentum of the protests they managed to mount do not accurately reflect their real position in society. At the same time, not every political activity is suited to a decentralised structure. If you want to address the US Congress, the UK Parliament or the UN Human Rights Council to expose the atrocities of the Chinese Communist Party, what use is decentralisation? The rational approach is to throw your full weight behind a few recognisable leaders, so that the voices of the White Paper Generation can actually be heard and be given a seat at the table. The fact that ‘Teacher Li’ became a major online figure and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize is, in itself, a sign that strict decentralisation has already given way to a model with a de facto focal point.

        The times have changed as well. The Chinese dissidents of 1989 genuinely possessed, for their era, advanced knowledge, abilities and ideas – and China was on the verge of rapid economic growth. Even if they suffered persecution, spent some years in prison and then emerged, they could still become leading figures of their generation. Things are very different now. Participants in the White Paper Movement can spend two nights in a police station, lose their jobs and find themselves without any livelihood. Their passports are revoked, and even if they succeed in escaping from China, they have to struggle for legal status just to remain abroad. How are they supposed, under such conditions, to carry on with the overthrow of Xi Jinping and the Communist Party?

        The shifting of the times is also visible in the Chinese state’s approach to overseas dissidents. In the past, there were essentially two guiding principles: anyone who wanted to leave would not be prevented (Liu Xiaobo and a few others were the exception), and so long as they stayed abroad and did not actively get in the way, their political activities could be tolerated. That stance, objectively, gave the older generation of activists a certain amount of space to develop overseas. By the time the authorities decided to rein things in, they discovered that the movement was already too big to stamp out. Today, by contrast, China’s more refined techniques of social control are combined with a policy of refusing to let dissenters leave the country to grow into a force abroad, and with long-term efforts to infiltrate and sabotage organisations overseas. New groups such as those emerging from the White Paper Movement simply lack the opportunity to grow in their early stages. It is hardly surprising, then, that the movement has failed to establish itself outside China.

        In fact, if we take a hard-headed view, it is highly doubtful whether the White Paper Movement was really the main driver behind the end of dynamic zero-Covid. Take Beijing as an example. From April or May 2022, the city was essentially operating with a requirement to take a PCR test every forty-eight hours. According to estimates based on the policies and costs of tier-one and tier-two cities nationwide, in the latter half of 2022 Beijing’s annual spending on PCR testing under this forty-eight-hour regime was between 200 and 250 billion yuan, borne by the Government. That level of expenditure was, on the face of it, bearable for a city as wealthy as Beijing. However, many people overlook one key point: whether in Beijing or elsewhere, community tests were carried out using pooled samples. This meant taking swabs from ten, or even twenty, people, putting them in a single test tube, and treating the whole group as negative if the pooled sample was negative. Only if the pooled test came back positive would each member of the group be tested individually. The reason, of course, was to cut costs. Why did this work? Because until late 2022 the rate of positive cases was still very low. The underlying reality of the epidemic made such cost-saving methods feasible. But by November, once there were positive cases in almost every entranceway and on every floor, pooled tests began to return positive results every time. The method became useless. At that point, only single-sample testing remained an option – which meant that testing costs would jump ten- or twenty-fold, to 2.5 or 5 trillion yuan, with other cities facing similar increases. That was beyond the capacity of the Chinese state to bear.

        Seen in this light, when the Communist Party began lifting lockdowns at the end of November 2022, it did so in a context very different from the classic narrative. In that narrative, the Ürümqi fire triggered nationwide fury, the White Paper Movement sprang up in city after city, and the Chinese Government, faced with an overwhelming wave of public anger, lifted the controls. It is a rare victory for grassroots protest in China. Yet closer scrutiny reveals that this story, if not wholly fictional, is at least one-sided. Long before the White Paper protests, the Omicron variant was spreading wildly; pooled tests of ten or twenty people were becoming unsustainable; and the financial burden of the forty-eight-hour testing regime, the core pillar of the entire system, was about to rise ten- or twenty-fold. At that point, the Chinese state simply could not sustain the apparatus of ‘zero-Covid’ control. The Ürümqi fire and the White Paper protests did no more than accelerate a decision that financial and epidemiological realities had already forced upon it.

        This is not to deny the merits of the White Paper Movement, nor to belittle its place in history. Most of its participants were still very young. There is no need for them to define their entire lives in terms of a single episode of social protest that took place when they were twenty or twenty-five. To borrow Zhao Ziyang’s words to the students on Tiananmen Square: ‘You are still young; the future is long.’ The free world beyond China offers horizons far wider than Urumqi Middle Road or Liangma River. If the White Paper Movement has not, as some hoped, become the new benchmark for democratic struggle, the young people who took part are more than capable of building broader and more powerful movements in free societies. We can only hope that people will remember the White Paper Movement and the silhouettes of those young protesters who cried out for basic freedoms on behalf of all Chinese citizens – and that the democratic movements of this new era will not be confined to the symbol of a single blank sheet of paper.