Current propaganda and censorship efforts by the Chinese language Communist Social gathering (CCP) have revealed an pressing need amongst social gathering management to blunt a spirit of defiance inside Chinese language society. Regardless of the social gathering’s makes an attempt to curb dissent, nonetheless, China’s residents proceed to defy authority, as evidenced by current findings of Freedom Home’s China Dissent Monitor (CDM).
Earlier this 12 months, China’s Ministry of State Safety (MSS) carried out a marketing campaign that blamed “overseas forces” for funding the unfold in China of “mendacity flat” (躺平), a time period that has turn into broadly used to describe the rejection of societal expectations that push people to try for materials and social achievement. The official media attributing the pattern of mendacity flat to overseas interference was promptly pilloried by Chinese language netizens who stuffed on-line remark sections with criticism and satire. A well-liked vlogger sarcastically complained that he wished to “report” overseas forces for failing to pay him regardless of his tireless efforts to lie flat. These responses have all since been censored.
The CCP’s seeming obsession with curbing the mendacity flat mindset is price understanding. The time period’s reputation rose in response to China’s grueling “996” work tradition, during which many corporations anticipate their workers to work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. for six days every week. However because the idea of mendacity flat has expanded, the CCP has turn into nervous that it displays an underlying resistance to the social gathering’s designs for Chinese language folks, and that an growing variety of residents merely don’t care about or assist the concept of working tougher to contribute to a extra highly effective state. The Communist Social gathering’s chief Xi Jinping has explicitly spoken out towards the mendacity flat angle.
Responding to discontent with censorship
The problem of well-liked indifference to nationalist objectives has gained higher urgency for the CCP as a persistently sluggish home economic system has fueled the recognition of mendacity flat and different types of societal opposition, together with protests. The CDM undertaking has documented an increase in public protests, a lot of which have been pushed by financial grievances like unpaid wages, unfinished housing, or land confiscation. Whereas the CCP has lengthy been involved with stopping public mobilization, which it euphemistically calls “sustaining social stability,” new directives to strengthen group surveillance and stop massive numbers of migrant employees from “idling of their hometowns” reveal a rising nervousness that the unfold of discontent is fueling extra dissent.
The CCP’s considerations over well-liked discontent have additionally led to intensified censorship efforts. In February, the Our on-line world Administration of China ordered that social media platforms take down and cut back the visibility of content material that “incites unfavourable emotions.” In its most up-to-date report, CDM discovered that the censorship marketing campaign resulted in a big lower in details about protests revealed on Douyin (the Chinese language model of TikTok). A CDM evaluation of almost 3,000 Douyin posts about protest confirmed that two-thirds had been deleted, with greater charges for these about protests that have been prone to contain authorities malfeasance. An earlier CDM evaluation of 4,000 posts from Sina Weibo (a microblogging platform) discovered that these expressing dissent towards highly effective actors, even when they weren’t authorities actors, have been extra prone to be taken down.
Repression falls brief
One purpose of those propaganda and censorship campaigns is to suppress the sense amongst residents that defiance is commonplace, whether or not by means of mendacity flat or public demonstration. The technique could also be efficient in decreasing the virality of dissent and stopping some localized protests from morphing into bigger actions by holding folks at the hours of darkness. Nevertheless, it has didn’t eradicate a spirit of opposition that China’s residents proceed to exhibit.
As proven by the newest CDM report, residents typically even mobilize extra rapidly in response to authorities efforts to silence them. In June, peaceable protests sparked by an animal abuse case in Chongqing developed into a big demonstration lasting 4 days, with numerous protesters becoming a member of in defiance after police detained a number of the contributors on the primary day. In August 2025, a violent faculty bullying case in Jiangyou, Sichuan Province, led a whole bunch to assemble in entrance of a metropolis authorities constructing to demand an enough official response. When that protest was met with a police crackdown, hundreds extra took to the streets, with some protesters even recorded chanting “give us again democracy.”
This spirit of defiance can also be obvious in residential neighborhoods throughout China, the place disputes between owners and property administration corporations over charges and misconduct have led to rising numbers of protest occasions. Residents have more and more self-organized to realize higher autonomy of their communities, typically utilizing grassroots elections to type homeowners’ committees and oust the administration corporations. Residents persist in these actions regardless of joint efforts by native governments and property corporations to intervene with or suppress their organizing.
Defiance endures
Such opposition to authority is widespread in China. CDM has recorded greater than 16,000 protests since June 2022, occurring in each area of the nation. In 2025, CDM documented 5,343 dissent occasions, the very best annual variety of protests recorded by the undertaking, marking a 44 % rise over the earlier 12 months. Whereas sometimes sparked by financial grievances, many occasions are additionally pushed by points like faculty security, environmental causes, or official misconduct. At the very least a 3rd of protests are directed on the authorities or different state actors.
