Ms. Li, who grew up in northeastern China and moved to Queens more than six years ago, has not spoken to her relatives abroad since widespread protests began there. “I don’t want them to be mistakenly labeled as foreigners trying to talk about Chinese national security,” Ms Li said. As the largest protests since the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprisings ripple across China, Chinese in New York and the wider diaspora are watching in anticipation. Concern is paramount. They fear that with the return of the lockdown, their families will not have enough food again. They wait for friends to come back online after attending protests. They are trying to communicate and avoid censor algorithms on Chinese social media. But they cannot share their concerns openly with the people they love back in China, or even talk about the protests. Even as the country’s internet censors struggle to contain the tide of online discontent, they say, it is too dangerous. “We just say, ‘Watch out,’ or ‘Do you have enough food?’ said Ms. Lee. “We repeat it over and over again. I don’t know if they understand what I’m trying to say.” At the beginning of the pandemic, she tried to share information with her family about the lockdowns. They quickly broke up a group chat. He thinks they were scared. Now, they don’t communicate much anymore. “It could raise security concerns if the conversation was leaked or scrutinized by national security,” he said. “There is no one who necessarily harasses us. But this fear is deeply rooted in our everyday life.”
Understand the protests in China
The protests in China began after a deadly apartment building fire in the western city of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province, a tragedy many linked to the Covid lockdowns. Protesters are calling on the government to relax its relentless ‘zero Covid’ policy. Some have taken a bolder step, challenging the increasingly authoritarian government more directly and calling on Xi Jinping, the top leader, to step down. Across New York in recent days, residents with connections to China said censorship there is intensifying the unique complexities of speech across generations. Some said their parents were in Tiananmen Square, but they didn’t know their politics now. “We’re talking about a totalitarian regime,” said Vincent Gao, Ph.D. student in Italian at Yale University who was born in China. “You don’t even know what your parents think about a certain subject. You don’t know if they have really participated in the regime’s propaganda.” An argument wouldn’t be worth it, he said — they live so far away. And it wouldn’t be safe to have an open discussion, anyway. Instead, he asks simple questions: Are you doing well? Is there food in the house? How is your health? “I’m not going to ask my parents: What do you think about ‘zero Covid’? What do you think about the lockdown? What do you think of Xi Jinping?’ said Mr. Gao. “You will expose them to undue risk. What will they say?’ In contrast, supporters of the protesters in China are taking part in solidarity demonstrations. In New York, a crowd of about 1,000 gathered outside the Chinese consulate one night last week. At times, the crowd called for Mr. Xi to resign. “It’s a constant stream of anger,” said Mr. Gao, who attended the demonstration. “It’s despair about what’s going to happen to my country, to the people I love, to the country I love.” Protesters have also gathered at other Chinese consulates and embassies around the world, from London to Toronto, Los Angeles to Hong Kong. Many held white pieces of paper, like protesters in China, symbolizing censorship. For Uyghurs in the diaspora, protesting against China’s government is not new. Since 2017, China has held hundreds of thousands of people in internment camps, targeting Muslim minorities. Uyghur activists outside China have spoken out against the arrests, which the United Nations says may amount to crimes against humanity. Recently, Uyghurs have sought to draw attention to the long confinement of people in Xinjiang province: much of the region was under lockdown for more than 100 days before the Urumqi fire. Ankar Uyghur, 24, was born in Urumqi and lived there until he was 7. He fled to the United States in 2006 with his immediate family, but the rest of his family is still in Xinjiang. His family has been threatened, he said. Strange men called his mother on video chat from his grandparents’ house. He assumes he has family in the camps, he said, but communication is so difficult he doesn’t know for sure. But Mr. Uighurs said he is also surprised by the reaction of the Chinese around him. Lockdowns, he said, have created unprecedented unity. For the first time, they mourn the deaths of people in Xinjiang with him. “Even Chinese citizens are starting to talk,” he said. “That’s what’s so different this time. I am not alone in complaining. It’s not just me and my people – it’s all the people of China.” Since the protests began, few in the diaspora have been sleeping soundly. Many described restless dreams. Some were specific: fears that the protests were a trap set by the Chinese Communist Party; An architecture graduate student who grew up in Guangdong province, he has not been back to China for three years. (She asked to be identified only by her last name: Liu. She feared her family members could face reprisals if the crackdown intensified.) “There were 10 days of mandatory quarantine and I only had 20 days off,” said Ms Liu, 26, her eyes filling with tears. He came back once a year, in the winter. But he couldn’t take that long, he said. Guilt is also pervasive. Many Chinese in the United States have received Western vaccines, which are more effective than China’s domestic vaccines. They don’t have to undergo painful, daily Covid tests or, worse, spend months indoors. “It’s like survivor’s guilt,” said Tiger, an artist from Shanghai who asked not to be named. “The people I know in Shanghai, they have to go through lockdown,” said Tiger, 38. “I don’t. I feel like I’m getting away with it. But is it me? Am I not brave enough?’ When Shanghai went into lockdown in April, his parents were visiting him in New York. Instead of enduring grueling months of confinement with 25 million other Shanghai residents, they spent the spring together, relieved to be able to move about freely. A few weeks ago, as cases surged and China began reimposing lockdowns, he was sick with worry. His parents are back in Shanghai. They are in their sixties. They have hypertension. They need daily medication. Then, as he watched protests fill the neighborhood where he grew up, he woke up worried again. It’s exciting, but who would take care of his parents if something happened? “You don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, especially after all the protests,” he said. “You can have a lockout tomorrow. You could have something worse than a lockdown. We just don’t know.”
