Protests in China have a pre-revolutionary feel to them

Editorial: Xinjiang happens to be one of the many areas where the usual modest-sized (but noisy) protests about routine concerns have evolved into larger, less orderly and rather more politically charged protests

China, like Iran and Russia, is a country which is in a more or less permanent state of war with its own people (AP)

As with the disturbances in Iran (and, to a lesser degree, Russia) the wave of protests breaking out in China have something of a pre-revolutionary feel to them.

Or, perhaps, a pre-pre-revolutionary feel, given that the Communist Party of China has maintained a firm and wary grip on the people of China since 1949. It has ruled through self-inflicted famines, breakneck industrialisation, brutal suppression in Tiananmen Square, oppression in Tibet and Hong Kong – and, lately, allegations of genocide of the Uighur people in the province of Xinjiang.

Xinjiang happens to be one of the many areas where the usual modest-sized (but noisy) protests about routine concerns have evolved into larger, less orderly and rather more politically charged protests. In Xinjiang, residents in a block of flats burned to death because the doors had been locked as a Covid measure, and they couldn’t escape.