中国青年行动者
中国青年行动者

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Part 1 Young activists and self-organisation during the pandemic

Author: Ling En

At the beginning of 2020, the Covid pandemic broke out in Wuhan. Young activists started to join the pandemic relief effort. Among them, some activists had been working in the non-profit sector or working on social issues for years, while some gained hands-on experience in joining social movement for the first time. 

Apart from individual activism, self-organisation was the most common form of activism under the pandemic. Remote coordination tools facilitated activists’ self-organising. These new tools allowed remote participation of those who could not be on the ground. These tools also laid the foundation for joint actions among the youth across the globe and synergizing online and offline activities. 

During the pandemic, temporary blossoming of self-organisations resembled the emergence of self-organisations during the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. The government relatively relaxed its control and restrictions on activists’ actions and information-sharing. Activists and service recipients also built mutually beneficial connections. In the face of the pandemic, activists omitted or put aside the potential conflict of visions. They collaborated on one single issues without much conflict.

As shortage of supplies was alleviated and government support was materialized, the restriction and repression of activists and self-organisations also followed. The authorities frequently questioned and warned activists. The police even arrested activists for archiving public information during the pandemic. Most of the groups finally died down following the new wave of censorship. Only some could continue to develop as projects in collaboration with institutions.

Until now, a small handful of activists and organisations have been initiating online and offline sharing and training sessions. They regularly reflect on their activism and shared experiences. Some activists also continued to observe, document and learn about activism individually.

1. Landscape of the activist communities

Young activists emerged under the pandemic in response to a public health crisis as a new and temporary activism community.

First, below is a simple description of the communities.  

(1)  Participants were younger. In many activist teams, university students formed the main group of participants. Young activists also demonstrated the ability of organising and initiating activism. For example, a high school group initiated donation of medical supplies.  

(2)  The activists had professional background. Some of the activists possessed professional knowledge and skills in the field of public health, medicine, psychosocial counselling, social work and disaster relief. Some also had experience in frontline relief and aid.

(3)  Experienced activists led and supported the activism. During the pandemic, activists working in the non-profit sector for a long time and based in grassroots organisations took the leading role. At the early stage of the activism, activists with background in emergency relief and experiences in coordinating non-profit resources first established organisations. They actively intervened in events, called for participation, coordinated, and led.  

These experienced activists laid down universal principles of activism for self-organisations, such as confidentiality of information for the aid recipients. They also inspired the awareness of self-protection among these self-organisations, such as setting boundaries for activisms and choosing ways of intervention deliberately. These experienced activists also brought in awareness of gender equality. For example, they immediately promoted and advocate for knowledge about anti-sexual harassment after the establishment of the mobile cabin hospital. They also paid attention to the physical and mental health of activists and immediately sought resources for support. 

(4)  There was widespread participation and development of specialized advocacy. In response to the coordination and calls for participation, young activists from all walks of life gradually joined the movement. They formed specialized organisations based on their backgrounds and identities. For example, activists from the internet industry established a self-organisation. Their strategy was to use products and programming to construct and create platform for supplies information. Activists working on animal protection established groups that helped find and transferred supplies for small animals. Pregnant activists formed teams that worked on pregnant women issues. Workers’ rights activists particularly focused on sanitary workers’ needs for protective equipment.

(5)  The activists had gender awareness. Some activists had good awareness of gender equality. They were the first to be aware of the menstrual needs of frontline women medical workers and advocated for donations of period briefs. At the early stage of the construction of the mobile cabin hospital, some activists focusing on gender issues launched advocacy against sexual violence. They sensitized the public with information about anti-sexual harassment. They essentially succeeded in pre-intervention in the mobile cabin hospital communities. During the pandemic, some hospitals forced women medical workers to shave and take oath. Targeting these insulting incidents, activists immediately launched solidarity and protest actions.

(6)  The activists had connections across the world. Online technologies and remote coordination tools made cross-regional connection and collaboration possible. Overseas and local young activists initiated interactions and connections. In some projects, collaborations across time zones allowed groups and projects to operate non-stop during the most crucial periods. After the pandemic was contained, some activists shifted their focus to overseas. They participated in the new wave of support actions, including information translation, supplies transportation, and sharing of experiences.

In addition, this report also examined the motivation behind the activists’ participation. Combining the information retrieved from the application forms and follow-up interviews conducted by a researcher, below are some of the motivations that prompted the participation of young activists.

(1)  Connection with the region. Connection with the region can be divided into connection on the ground and remote connection. Activists on the ground, being more restricted by the physical space, were inevitably prompted to decide whether they should take action when experiencing a crisis situation. Many remote activists studied or lived in the quarantine zones. For some of them, their relatives and friends were in the quarantine zones when the pandemic broke out. Their participation was more the result of memory and emotional connections. These connections prompted them to create online space for activism despite the huge distance. This type of young activists was mostly represented by alumni associations.

(2)  Self-help. The participation was less because of selfless contribution but more the tremendous challenge to survive brought by the crisis. A sense of crisis caused them to help themselves. In the process their activism expanded into supporting others. This is most obvious among the group of activists from Hubei.

(3)  Survivors’ guilt. Some activists thought they were the survivors of the pandemic and did not bear the consequences of the pandemic. Therefore, they wanted to experience the difficulties and sufferings with others.

(4)  Self-consciousness as a citizen. Fewer activists are grouped under this category. In their activism, these activists took on the activist role that most resembled that of social workers.

(5)  To escape from the sense of helplessness created by a life without control. These activists wanted to regain control over their lives through activism. To this type of activists, the motivation was to transfer their own anxiety. According to observation of a coordinator of self-organisation, this type of activists usually lacked energy in activism. Their participation was relatively unstable and the result was relatively less effective.

Except for the minority of activists who had a sense of citizenship, many young participants who took action during this pandemic had not identified themselves as activists. The majority of them usually identified themselves as volunteers. They demonstrated unfamiliarity towards concepts such as citizen participation, citizen identity, and civil rights. They understood the participation of the pandemic relief effort more as a one-off volunteer service. During the process of delivering relief, more of the participants were realizing their own values. Few of them were aware that they were realizing civic values. Participants defined individual actions as apolitical.

2. Models of activism and organizing

During this pandemic, apart from individual actions, self-organisations of young activists demonstrated three main types of characteristics, they are:

(1)  Centralized

These organisations include alumni associations, overseas Chinese organisations, and business organisations. They already had a centralized organisational structure as their foundation. They expanded their work using existing personnel and resources. Their activism demonstrated considerable structure. Their organising was more orderly. In this pandemic relief, some self-organisations that completely broke off from centralized organisations decided to operate under or even merge with centralized organisations due to security concerns. This is to avoid questions about the legality of the organisations and their actions. In their activism, these activists maintained very high autonomy and agility.

(2)  De-centralized

A project organisation in 2020 was a classic example of de-centralised organisation. The organisation was co-established by participants. There was no clear management mechanisms or clear structure. The organisation encouraged self-initiated contributions from activists. It demanded the activists to position themselves and utilize the appropriate skill sets in the organisation quickly and precisely. In project development, the work moved forward using co-creation and deliberation. The project fully utilized internet coordination tools and was completely open-source and transparent. It attracted a lot of participation, especially from decentralised technical workers. The organisation was relatively influential. However, this type of projects also lacked clear positioning and strategy. Participants were more dispersed, making it difficult to cultivate the bonding and trust that were essential to the continuation of the organisation. Therefore, the organisation only launched limited amount of work. 

(3)  Distributed

For example, a project organisation was initiated by several activists and then recruited more activists. At the beginning, the activists set a relatively clear position for the organisation, decided the scope of their services, and created initial modules of different functions. The initiator took the role of coordinator and deliberated decisions such as goals and tasks setting with collaborative activists. Although the activism had a shared vision and sense of belonging, different functional modules developed in a relatively independent way. Separately, they explored different types of activism and continued to cultivate new functional modules. In the middle and later stage of the activism, some functional modles started to break off from the initial organisation and become more independent groups and teams. They generated new goals, visions and strategies. The characteristics of collaborations were especially obvious among these activists. These organisations are characterised by the form of activism that shows the pattern of coordination, task assignments and recycling results, and re-coordination.

This type of organisations had to overcome many challenges in their operations. For example, the collaboration and communication on their activism were more difficult. It was harder to build effective and concentrated communication channels when there were a lot of actions going on at the same time. The self-correction and adjustment of each action could cause the activists to raise doubts about the meaning and consistency of the actions. At the same time, actions running separately could lead to duplication in these actions. Also, different modules produced their own actions. It was difficult to deliver the combined impact of these actions. 

To summarise, regardless of the forms of organising, during an emergency, coordination, communication, and collaboration among activists with no social relationships with each other were faced with difficulties. The pandemic imposed a huge challenge on many activists’ ability to lead, strategize, manage, operate, coordinate, and communicate.

3. Contribution to the activism made by young activists during the pandemic

In this pandemic, activists could be found participating in the below bodies of work:         

(1)  Information services

a)   At the beginning of the pandemic when information was not circulating well, activists exercised citizens’ right to information through organising and disseminating pandemic-related information.

b)  Activists proactively inquired, collected and summarized medical recommendations and information about pandemic prevention. They produced different kinds of information packs. For example, an organisation wrote guidelines on lockdown at home.

c)   Activists were in constant contact with hospitals and medical workers to comb through information from the wards. For example, a group focusing on hospital beds summarized and publicized information about hospital beds every day. They also created guidelines on seeking medical help for patients.

d)  Activists collected, verified and documented requests for help. Activist teams were all contacted by national or local media workers. They asked activists to help collect and submit requests for help, which could help the government to progress with its work.  

(2)  Medical assistance

a)   Activists provided free online medical consultation and guidance to patients quarantined at home.

b)  Activists transported medical equipment for patients quarantined at home, such as household oxygen generators and ventilators. Using no-contact delivery, activists transported this equipment to the patients quarantined at home. Due to the high cost, this kind of activism often needed the support of resourceful organisations or support from individuals.

(3)  Providing supplies

a)   The scope of the activism included but was not limited to activists coordinating or initiating global procurement of supplies, quality assurance, local and international shipping, as well as transportation on the ground.

b)  The most difficult part of providing supplies was to break through the administrative restrictions and limitations of transportation. For example, due to Customs’ restrictions, one of the groups transported aid supplies in different ways. Tour guides brought supplies with them when travelling. Civilian helicopters transported the supplies across provinces. Local citizens then formed local transportation fleets for delivery. People then threw the supplies from one side of the highway checkpoints to another. The supplies were finally delivered to the targeted hospitals. 

c)   The time needed to provide supplies often exceeded the expectation of the activists. A coordinator of one group did not plan to be part of the supplies support. However, the frontline was in an emergency. Medical workers were working in extremely difficult environment. The coordinator had no choice but to join the effort to provide supplies.

(4)  Psychosocial counselling, support and companionship

a)     Activists providing this type of support possess professional knowledge in psychology and social work. They also have the experiences in carrying out this kind of work. There was also supervising team to lead and support frontline activists.

b)    This type of activism mainly included:

  • Online support for patients as well as psychosocial support and companionship for their family and friends.
  • One on one psychosocial counselling and follow-up in the long run
  • Creating online courses, sharing knowledge online, organising online workshops and coordinating, curating and executing activities such as mindfulness, praying, and mind clearing.
  • Online psychosocial support the patients in mobile cabin hospital
  • Working with a social work professor, an activist team connected with the mobile cabin hospitals in Wuhan and Wuchang. These were the first and only mobile cabin hospitals that received online psychosocial support. According to an activist who followed up on this issue for an extended period of time, the counselling outcomes demonstrated that patients in mobile cabin hospitals with psychosocial supported recovered better than those who did not have psychosocial support.
  • The pandemic took lives away. In response, activists took part in bereavement counselling and caretaking of those who lost their loved ones. An activist group created a guidebook for this area of work. The guidebook also took different religions and cultures into considerations.
  • Sustaining and extending the post-crisis psychological reconstruction      

c)     Experiences and observations

  • Activists providing psychosocial support when participating activism during the pandemic summarised their observations about people’s lack of understanding, sense of ambivalence, and rejection towards psychosocial support. These feelings stemmed from the lack of day-to-day resources and the lack of awareness in seeking and utilizing psychosocial resources. There was also a shortage of professionals in the field.
  • An activist told the author that activists of social work background are a strong partner for activists of psychological background. Activists with psychological background tend to have a mindset of “no action without asking for help”, while social worker activists would actively intervene cases and made it smoother and more efficient working with third parties such as the community.

4. Reflection of the challenges and future facing the activists

(1)  Most of the activists lacked a sense of citizenship and the ability to take part in public affairs. Many of them joined the activism out of fear. They were motivated by a sense of crisis and the need to self-help. Their participation was prompted by the need to survive, instead of the sense of citizenship or public participation. Most of the activists did not have the opportunity or channel to understand or learn about disaster relief in their daily lives. Therefore, it was obvious that they lacked the corresponding professional training.   

(2)  The self-organisations were mostly established in response to an emergency state. Few of the initiators or coordinators had real ability to lead activism. Organisations had little prior experience for direct application. Organisations mostly relied on instincts, experience, and fast learning. The means, strategies and methods of these organisations were relatively primitive and inexperienced.     

(3)  The social environment and government policy were not conducive to the survival and continuation of self-organisations. This pandemic was a large-scale collaboration prompted by instincts to self-help. The collaboration put aside differences in ideas, political views, and other prejudices. However, the groups did not take the opportunity or have the time to better understand each other. They also did not explore the possibility of long-term collaboration and continuous interactions. The long-term repression against civil society self-organising activism destroyed the soil for self-organisations to grow and develop. This monumental relief effort of civil society self-organisations did not give birth to new social organisations that were known to the public. It had been already proved that it was difficult to find suitable ways to pass down the relief experience of these self-organisations to future activists. When the next public crisis happens, we may face similar situation and adopt similar and repeated modes of activism.  

(4)  Information disclosure and freedom of expression. A volunteer told the author that due to a lack of transparency in information, it was difficult to understand local policies, restrictions and requirements when doing community work during the pandemic. This work included helping to sell unmarketable agricultural products and direct procurement from the communities. The lack of transparency severely impeded the effectiveness of activism. At the same time, as discussed above, in the middle and later stage of the pandemic, the government proactively contracted activists through media workers in order to obtain information on requests for assistance. This directly demonstrated that the government inevitably needs the participation of civil society self-organisations. It also demonstrated that self-organisations can concretely help the government to perform its functions.

(5)  The self-growth of activists amid adversities. When it is impossible to form networks, we work independently. Through the activism and participation during the pandemic, activists can further observe and learn from movements across the globe and positive activism experiences. They can utilize all available resources to nurture their own sense of citizenship and activism ability. They can try to establish bonding groups, study activism strategies, and prepare to join or lead the next round of activism. During this pandemic, a lot of wage earners working 9 to 5 jobs saw the possibility of becoming part-time activists. Through the activism, they felt an alignment of their personal values and social needs. This also sowed the seed for responding to call for activism in the future. We can encourage these budding activists to cultivate opportunities to take actions in their daily lives. Starting from community participation, they can continue their activism. They can also try more pre-intervention, which laid the foundation for activism preparation.   

(6)  The many possibilities to sustain self-organisations. A person who studied and nurtured self-organisations suggested that activists in China could study and explore the different possible forms of self-organisations, such as organisations with umbrella structures. Amnesty International adopted this kind of structure. At the same time, activists can also be aware of and study the evolution of overseas relief organisations. As a result, the activists can understand how they survived, sustained themselves, and carried out long-term organising.   

(7) Endless reflections and selfless sharing. Activism experiences can only be passed down and transformed through reflections. Only transformation can bring about the escalation of activism strategies and increase in activism impact. Activists in China must find ways to document their activism insights and experiences. They must also create more opportunities for sharing experiences and try hard to fill the generational gap. From SARS to Covid-19, civil society activism had no fundamental changes. What about the next crisis? Will we still be forced to take action?

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