Stories of Greatness: Operation Street Cleaning

...Or how China is tricky at suppressing protests.

Of course, you have heard of the protests in Tunisia, Egypt and now Libya. Well it seems as though China might be trying to bring the North African changes over to Asia. A website, Boxun.com, called for China to take up the "Jasmine Protests" and show their distaste for the current situation here. This was last Sunday, where it posted specific locations, including the Peace Cinema in Shanghai. They called for people to continue the protest every Sunday at 2pm. The Peace Cinema happens to be very close to us, in fact if we were on the other side of the hotel we could see it. So we decided to go over there and see if anything was going to happen. Peace Cinema is within a greater mall, called Raffles City, that also has a subway stop underneath it. This entire area is always pretty crowded because of all the shopping and restaurants.

As we were walking over, a mere 5 min walk, we started to see more police officers than usual. Then there was a large street cleaning truck that sprayed unsuspecting walkers, showing how rare it was that they were there. When we got to the corner across from the mall, the side street was closed. The sidewalk was very crowded with people, more than usual, but they were mostly looking around to see what was going on. The cinema had been closed, again. (Last week, it was shut down for "repairs" as well). There were probably about 150 police officers, all blowing whistles and ushering people along. There really wasn't much that happened, because there were so many police officers that wouldn't allow it. The thing that was most surprising to me, and why I named this post Operation Street Cleaning, was the use of street cleaners.

On top of the large street cleaning truck, there were two motorized sidewalk cleaners that were also stationed right in front of the Cinema. They did an awful good job of making sure that the crowd could not congregate for long. Is it possible that this was a coincidence? No, it was clearly part of the government quelling these "protests" before they could start.

They were certainly not protests, most people were like us, just trying to see what was going on. We saw a few police officers question a Chinese man and take away his camera. While there were many others taking pictures, even a Westerner with a professional camera, that were not confiscated. Later, a few men were taken away from the crowd and two police vans drove off with their sirens going, presumably with those people. Aside from that, it was mostly just whistle-blowing.

I do not know much about Tunisia, Egypt or Libya. I also don't know much about China, but at least I have spent time here. I have not experience any form of oppression, aside from being blocked from certain websites. I don't know if China could actually gain some ground by organizing these kind of protests. I only hope that it can be peaceful and that there won't be more "human rights violations", especially not on the same scale as Libya.

Two videos Ben shot of the scene: