A blank piece of paper is currently capturing people's imagination in Mainland China, as it once did in Hong Kong a couple of years back. Not a single stroke of a single Chinese character is needed when people are already reading each other's mind. Once again, people have found themselves in the same boat. They must keep their boat from sinking. Enough is enough. They no longer want to go with the flow of life as lemmings, falling off the cliff and sinking into the Arctic sea of Zero-COVID oppression.*
Oppression is suppression of free expression. Unfree, Chinese people's expression takes the form of a blank piece of paper, which is a blank check for them to take to the streets, to say that they can't take Xi anymore. Loudly and clearly, they actually call Xi to quit, not that they believe Xi will bow out anytime soon. But at least symbolically, they are voting Xi out with their blank pieces of paper. What they are doing, in my fellow Americans' eyes, is no more than civil disobedience. In China, however, civil disobedience is uprising. Like it or not, a white paper revolution is taking shape. Whether or not it will take root is anybody's guess. Your guess?
Author: Lingyang Jiang
*I owe lemmings an apology for inadvertently implying that they are suicidal. No, they are not. Actually, a number of them were deliberately herded off a sea cliff in a 1958 Disney film titled "White Wilderness." The lemming suicide myth has been popularized since. Talk about misformation!