The reporter was dragged away by Chinese authorities while reporting on the Covid protests. Video / @Shanghaishang10
“No to Covid Tests! Yes to Freedom. No to lies! Yes to dignity”.
All over China this weekend ordinary people chanted those words on the streets as anger over Xi Jinping’s draconian zero Covid policy finally boiled over.
But the words they are repeating were inspired by a single act of defiance over a month ago.
On October 13, a man apparently acting alone draped two white banners daubed with large red characters over the parapet of the Sitong road bridge in northwest Beijing.
“[We] don’t need Covid tests, we need to eat; we don’t need lockdowns, we need freedom; we don’t need lies, we need dignity; we don’t need Cultural Revolution, we need reform; we don’t need leaders, we need votes; we are not slaves, we are citizens,” read one banner.
The protester hung banners from a bridge in Beijing calling for democratic reforms. Photo / Supplied
The second called for strikes and urged people to “take down dictator Xi Jinping”.
At the time, it seemed like an isolated and futile gesture of defiance. The man was immediately arrested, and all mention of the incident was immediately scrubbed from the Chinese internet.
The footage and any related hashtags, including “Sitong bridge” and “Beijing”, were quickly censored on Chinese social media, with online users reporting that their WeChat accounts were frozen after posting pictures of the event.
The censors’ efforts sometimes got out of hand. Several rock songs, including one called “Sitong Bridge”, were also pulled from the Chinese web.
Policemen pin down and arrest a protester during a protest on a street in Shanghai, China. Photo / AP
But on Saturday his words reappeared all over the country - chanted by crowds of young women on the streets of Shanghai and daubed in red paint on Beijing University campus buildings.
It seems too many drivers had already passed under the flyover on Beijing’s busy third ring road. Too many internet users had already seen and shared the images.
And too many people had also reposted the quickly removed manifesto he appears to have uploaded to the popular site ResearchGate.
Reposted copies of the manifesto suggest he called for strikes during the party congress, including raising banners, burning car tires, honking car horns in crowded areas and smashing Covid testing stations.
“China is the China of all Chinese people, not Xi Jinping’s China, not the private property of dictators,” he wrote.
Protesters hold up blank papers and chant slogans as they march in protest in Beijing. Photo / AP
He also used a quote from Soviet dissident and novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn: “We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying.”
One thing that has caught the attention of middle-class protesters is exactly the lack of personal grievance.
Rather than complaining about one of the myriad of material injustices that have inspired protests in the past, Bridge Man was focused on principles.
His stance has led some people to liken him to a “hero,” a “warrior”, or even to “tank man” - that other unknown protester who halted a column of tanks on Tiannamen Square in 1989.
Internet users concerned about the man’s fate attempted to identify him, focusing on a man who has a background in physics and is a partner at a Beijing technology company.
The Telegraph was unable to confirm whether the man identified on web forums is the man who was arrested.
