U.S. officials say the Biden administration supports the right to protest, but have offered little more.
The Biden administration is treading lightly in response to demonstrations in China by citizens angry over the country’s harsh COVID-19 restrictions, drawing criticism from Republicans and democracy advocates who say the White House should act more forcefully.
Relations between Washington and Beijing were extraordinarily tense even before the protests, and the Biden administration may be reluctant to condemn Xi after the presidents met in person for what U.S. officials described as a positive interaction “Pitiful,” tweeted Sen. Ted Cruz . “At a potentially historic inflection point, Dems shill for the CCP [Chinese Communist Party]. “It’s almost as if Biden wishes he was driving a tank in Tiananmen Square….”
But groups of Chinese people “shouting on a road in Shanghai,” where some went so far as to demand that Xi step down, and the other rallies do not a revolution make, said Robert Daly, a former U.S. diplomat in China who now heads the Kissinger Institute on China at the Wilson Center think tank.the 1989 pro-democracy protests
“When demonstrators say, ‘No to [COVID-19] tests, we want freedom,’ they are not talking about Bill of Rights freedom,” Daly said. “They are talking about returning to the kinds of freedom of movement they had” before the pandemic. The crescendo of protests now is due in part to expectations among many Chinese that COVID-19 restrictions were going to be eased after the 20th Communist Party conference in which Xi cemented his unprecedented third term as the country’s leader. But a spate of new cases brought additional lockdowns instead.
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