The China Dissent Monitor (CDM), a project by Freedom House, has recorded a significant number of incidents in the 370 provincial cities across China. The majority of these incidents were related to labor issues, accounting for 44 percent of the protests, followed by homeowners’ protests at 21 percent.
Among the regions with the highest number of protests, Guangdong Province in southern China stood out with 13 percent of all recorded incidents. Other provinces such as Shandong, Hebei, Henan, and Zhejiang also experienced a considerable number of protests. Notably, cities like Shenzhen, Xi’an, and Sanya witnessed more demonstrations related to economic issues. Many other cities with high protest percentages are located within Guangdong Province.
When it comes to property-related protests specifically, two Chinese real estate companies took the top spots. Country Garden, a property development company based in Guangdong that has been facing a default crisis since 2023, was involved in 106 incidents. Evergrande Group, another major Chinese property development company based in Shenzhen that has been undergoing liquidation since 2020 and defaulted in 2023 accounted for 71 incidents.
According to the report by Freedom House’s CDM project team members stated that these protests were driven by serious impacts on people’s livelihoods such as unfinished real estate projects or sudden workplace closures leading to unpaid wages.
Despite Beijing’s intervention measures over four decades of development efforts aimed at boosting economic growth within China’s economy is now entering stagnation due to several major issues hindering progress. These include an ongoing real estate crisis along with trade tensions between China and the United States as well as Beijing’s clampdown on private sector activities. Additionally,the long-term negative effects resulting from strict COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions have further contributed to this economic slowdown.
Observers analyzing these increasing protest numbers believe they indicate a legitimacy crisis faced by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Tseng Chien-Yuan from New School for Democracy highlighted how even middle-class citizens including property owners have joined these demonstrations which underscores how dire China’s economic situation truly is.
Wu Se-Chih from Taiwan-based Cross-Strait Policy Association explained that social unrest typically arises when people can no longer tolerate their circumstances. He also noted that due to CCP control and censorship practices it is likely that there are many more unreported protests than what CDM was able to collect data on.
Freedom House acknowledged media restrictions within communist China along with associated risks when collecting information about dissent and protest activities within the country.The CDM project aims at bridging this information gap through data collected from news reports,civil society organizations,and PRC-based social media platforms among other sources.
Wu further emphasized how CCP suppresses protests while blocking information flow both domestically and internationally but added that their methods are becoming increasingly limited especially given their current financial challenges.He predicted that if Chinese society as a whole falls into economic despair,it will become much harder for CCP regime control over power ultimately leading towards its collapse