79249 - Transcription of Podcast WITH US #77: Freedom and Democracy in China

N. Lygeros

In this podcast let’s talk about China’s security authorities because we can see right now mass protests against the system of the communist party of China and especially against Chinese leader Xi Jinping. It’s not just a problem about zero covid policy. It’s also a problem about democracy and freedom and it is important to note that the protests don’t want any peace, they want freedom and a greater democracy. If we see this mass gathering, mass protests against the system, obviously it reminds us the Tiananmen days and other problems. So for the system is very important to control all these, so we see police patrolling in every street of big cities of China. But the problem is relevant because in fact with this zero covid policy the communist  party uses all the tools it has to control in fact everything. So people are fed up with that and use this event and this system about something which is rather specific to make a bigger protest and ask for something which is even more important, freedom in this system and of course democracy. We can remind to all of you that in China even the flag is crucial as a symbol because it indicates that the communist party is the biggest system and it’s the only one  which can control everything.

So we have a big country, we have the empire of the center and we have the communist party since 1921 and we have the creation of the Popular Republic of China in 1949. So these points are very important for the system and in fact we do not realize that it’s not the next step of history in China. China shouldn’t have this system but obviously there are problems inside the country and this system wants to control any thought about democracy and freedom. We can see by this that the biggest enemy of China is exactly the combination of freedom and democracy and by the way this is the symbol of our country, of our free world. So the idea is to see those protests as an indication of something new and we have to help them because the communist party of China will erase anything like this as it did it already many times and especially in Tiananmen. So we can not be just a testimony about that, we have to fight with them, for their freedom and for their democracy which are for the moment obviously only visions of the future, but we need this future not only for China but also for the world.