中国青年行动者
中国青年行动者

如有任何问题,欢迎联系youngactivists2020@gmail.com. Should you have any questions on the report, please reach us at youngactivists2020@gmail.com

Annual Report on Chinese Young Activists (2020)

Report Summary

The year 2020 can perhaps be seen as an important turning point for young activists in China. The rapid diminishing of space for civil society actions and the Covid-19 pandemic prompted young activists to take action for self-survival and supporting other vulnerable groups. The chaos during the outbreak of the pandemic created some space for young activists to organize and take actions. Combining online and offline organizing, activists working on various issues provided information, medical assistance, resources, psychosocial support, and companionship for different social groups. Authorities were quick to limit this space for citizens initiating actions, and harassed and even convicted activists. However, in just a few months, young activists garnered valuable hands-on experience. Will this help young activists grow? How will they continue to explore new models and visions for their activism? How will they grow in a constantly restricted environment?

This report examines the characteristics of youth activism in 2020 by analysing longstanding trends. This report is divided into four sections according to groups - young feminists, young labour rights activists, young disability rights activists, and young LGBT activists. These four groups of activists are representatives of young activists in China. They are also relative active. Experienced young activists authored all four sections of the report. The sections include the landscape of the activist communities, models of activism and organizing, political control and suppression, and reflections on challenges and the future facing the movement. In addition, we have included an overarching analysis of young activists under the Covid-19 pandemic. Based on the description and analysis in this report, we have identified the following characteristics:

Landscape of the activist communities

The family background of the activists is diverse. Some activists come from urban middle-class families, while others come from rural village families. Most of them received higher education and started to develop an interest and participated in social movement when they were in university. We noticed that during the pandemic, a new group of young activists emerged. Among them were not only university students, but also high school students who participated and organized groups.

Although young activists are mostly located in first-tier cities like Beijing and Guangzhou, repression from the authorities forced these activists to be dispersed in second and third-tier cities to avoid harassment and find more space for operation. It is noteworthy that different political cultures and conditions for activism in different locations cultivated different methods and visions of activism. For labour activists, those in the South intervene in labour rights issues early through contact with labour NGOs. Those in the North emerged out of university student associations that were more theory-oriented, and they had less experience in direct participation.

Regardless of issues and locations, activists generally felt marginalized. This sense of marginality partly stemmed from their LGBT identities or family background. It also reflected that activists and the issues they work on were increasingly marginalised in society. The only exception is young disability rights activists. Although in their daily lives these activists are often discriminated against, they receive more recognition from mainstream society as they are often seen as role models for hard work.

Models of activism and organising

In recent years, civil society organizations are forced to transform or disband themselves because of government repression. This compels young activists to rely on online spaces for disseminating information and organizing. During the pandemic, this reliance on online spaces helped young activists master online activism that enabled them to quickly start connecting and organizing online communities.

Young feminists took advantage of the growing interests in gender issues in mainstream public discourse. Riding on trending events and topics, they called for accountability and drew more people into the movement. This model allowed activists to swiftly incorporate gender rights issues that arose during the pandemic into public discussion. Young labour activists also quickly initiated online communities and launched the ‘postpone work resumption for pandemic control’ movement. They demanded the authorities to extend public holidays and postpone work resumption in order to slow down the spread of Covid among workers. High school students, university students and white-collar workers formed voluntary groups that focused on the health of sanitary workers. Some young activist groups also focus on the problems of education facing children of migrant workers. Young LGBT activists urgently mobilised and responded to problems faced by their communities during the pandemic, such as the lack of medication and family frictions. In the past year, disability rights activists centred their work on advancing the right to information and equal rights to higher education.

From these longstanding trends, we saw increased overlaps and collaboration among activists from different sectors. For example, young LGBT activists and feminists have long been overlapping in personnel and network. A lot of LGBT groups in schools were also pioneers of women rights issues on campus. Disability rights activists also started to explore the intersectionality of gender and elderly issues.

Political control and repression

Young activists commonly confronted multi-layered political and financial pressure. This situation had not been improved significantly. The persisting repression since the 2018 Jasic incident had devastating impact on the organizing and network of young labour activists. At the same time, the control over university student associations made nurturing young activists more difficult. Activists who just regained some degree of personal freedom after experiencing political repression had difficulty in re-joining the movement due to heavy surveillance.

The year 2020 was a continuation of 2018 and 2019 where operation became more difficult with further limitation on the rights to freedom of expression. Constant smearing in the official narrative affected the synergies among activists, and jeopardised individual lives and financial situations of the activists. Authorities also retracted support from some activities. For example, the Shanghai Pride, an event that has taken place consecutively for the past twelve years, was forced to terminate all activities.

Compared to other sectors, disabilities had yet to become a 'sensitive' issue. Authorities were more tolerant of the discussion of disabilities issues. Activists thus, with moderate and implicit methods, made use of this space to raise rights awareness, share experiences and take solidarity actions online.

However, as a whole, organizations and individual activists were living in the cracks last year and making different new attempts. For example, young labour activists started to target service industries and white-collar communities, advocating and actualising the establishment of cooperatives among white-collar communities, and organized cultural discussions about "corporate slaves" (社畜) and "wage earners" (打工人).

Reflection of the challenges and future facing the movements

Social movements continued to be caught in adversities. Young activists reflected on the long-term lack of capacity building for the worker communities. It was a result of focusing on ad hoc interventions in labour conflicts over the years, and lacking organizing in the day-to-day oppression in workplace. The activists believed that they should strengthen worker communities’ practical understanding and engage in workplace organising on a more regularly basis.

According to young feminists, regardless of the severity of government repression, space for targeted activism and discussions exists, because more people became interested in women rights issues and the awareness of these issues had been growing. To young LGBT activists and disability rights activists, the highest priority was to bring issues experienced by their communities into mainstream narratives, such as including sex education and prevention of school bullying in the Law of Peoples Republic of China on the Protection of Minors.

Finally, activists working across all these issues identified the need for continuous growth as activists, connection with other activists and the rest of the world, critical reflections, as well as genuine sharing of experience with one another. The more important goals of this stage would be learning from experiences in other social movements, cultivating cross-sectional cooperation, and establishing broad coalitions.

Recommendations

Based on our analysis of China’s young activists in the past year, we see the emergence of a new layer of activists during the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite being fairly new to activism, they have gained critical experience in a narrow window of opportunity. The more experienced activists, while continuing to face suppression and surveillance, have stepped up to lead and collaborate with the young activists. Setting up new organizations or operating as part of organizations remain challenging. But external support could be critical in fostering the growth of individual activists and their networks.

We make two recommendations. Firstly, as the young activist often feel isolated and powerless, we should create new opportunities and platforms to bring activists, both young and more experienced, from different regions and across issues together for learning. The exchange should be multifaceted and include topical social issues, the stories of activists, and strategies to seek space for actions under authoritarianism. This is done with the expectation that they will set up different forms of small groups that play the role of sharing activist experience, providing mutual support, zooming in on specific issues, building communities and alliances so as to pursue social change.
Secondly, with fewer and fewer rights-based organizations surviving in China, we should provide capacity-building training to the new generation of activists who are dispersed across the country and not affiliated with any organization. The topics of these may include risk prevention and management, psychological counselling for activists, ways to bring their activism into their daily lives, and manage small groups. The goals are to raise their civil awareness, activist skills and offer them the necessary resources.


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