Recently, the “Babel” platform established by the overseas human rights organization “Freedom House” released an analysis report on civilian assembly and protest activities in China, listing the top 10 cities with the most protests caused by economic reasons in China, with Shenzhen ranking first.
In China, where freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and the right to assemble are strictly controlled, civilian assembly and protest activities are zones forbidden from media coverage and online discussion. Two years ago, “Freedom House” initiated a research project to systematically collect, organize, and analyze civilian assembly and protest activities in China. They collected samples of protest activities from 500 prefecture-level cities in China, conducting research from various aspects such as protest methods, characteristics, reasons, and regularly publishing analysis reports on the overseas “Babel” platform.
The latest report on protest activities in China for the second quarter of this year, released by “Babel,” specifically names the top 10 cities in China with the most protests caused by economic reasons. These cities are Shenzhen, Xi’an, Sanya, Dongguan, Zhengzhou, Zhuhai, Qingdao, Zhongshan, Guangzhou, and Huizhou.
According to “Babel,” in the past two years, Shenzhen, which has the highest number of protest activities, has experienced at least 306 protest incidents.
The second city with the most recorded protest activities is Xi’an, with 233 protest incidents in the past two years.
Kevin Slaten, the leader of the Babel research team in Taiwan, is fluent in Chinese and goes by the name Shi Kaiwen. In a recent interview with Radio Free Asia, he mentioned that out of the top 10 cities in China with the most protests caused by economic reasons in the past two years according to Babel’s statistics, six are in Guangdong Province, including Shenzhen, Dongguan, Zhuhai, Zhongshan, Guangzhou, and Huizhou.
Among them, there were 228 protest incidents in Guangzhou, 133 in Dongguan, 58 in Huizhou, 44 in Zhongshan, and 38 in Zhuhai.
The documented protest activities in Shenzhen on the Babel website include a strike by workers of Jinyan Science & Technology Co., Ltd. in Xinan Street, Bao’an District on June 13, 2024. They protested the company’s decision to relocate the factory to Zhongshan without compensating the workers.
Babel also recorded an incident on June 3, 2024, where villagers in Lirendong Village, Panyu District, Guangzhou, surrounded the village committee gate to protest the local government’s forced demolition without the villagers’ consent.
A video reposted by Babel shows an event on June 25, 2024, where hundreds of villagers from Hongdong Village, Chaoyang District, Shantou, Guangdong, stormed into the village committee building to protest. The text on Babel explained that they were protesting against village committee personnel assaulting villagers protecting their rights. The villagers of Hongdong have been protesting for six months to reclaim the occupied land.
The number of assembly and protest activities that occur each year in different regions of China, along with the characteristics of these protest activities, are topics that cannot be openly discussed.
Most of the protest activities documented by Babel in China are public assembly protests, including a small number of online protests.