Yesterday I pointed out a couple of different approaches China is using to stop future protests. One is to flood the streets with police who delete photos and videos from people’s phones. Another is to flood Twitter with soft-porn to prevent those who have access to a VPN in China from being able to find any videos of the protests that have already been uploaded.

Today the NY Times reports on the broader effort by China to put an end to the protests. The strategy so far is to completely ignore them and thereby deny them any significance.

[Xi] has stayed silent about the rare open challenge to his rule that erupted in the protests, including calls for him to step down. He appears to be wagering that by outwardly ignoring the demonstrations, he can sap their momentum while the security services move in and the party’s army of online loyalists try to discredit protesters as tools of American-led subversion.

“They’re saying as little as possible for as long as possible,” said William Hurst, a professor at the University of Cambridge who studies politics and protest in China. “If they speak, it could inflame the situation, so it’s better to sit back and pretend nothing is happening.”

On Tuesday, the People’s Daily, the party’s main newspaper, featured Mr. Xi’s talks with the visiting Mongolian president and a front-page celebration of Mr. Xi’s decade in power, but not a word about the protests, China’s most widespread since the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement of 1989…

“The moment that the central leadership takes an official line, they are dignifying the protests with an official response and admitting that they must be reckoned with, which gives them a status that they would rather deny them,” Prof. Hurst of Cambridge University said.

Here’s the current front page of People’s Daily. Absolutely nothing about the biggest story happening in the country right now.

If Xi didn’t say it and you didn’t see it then it didn’t happen. That’s the CCP’s approach to Tiananmen Square and it’s the same approach being taken to these protests now. But if authorities aren’t speaking, some of the usual mouthpieces are. Articles like this one are popping up, claiming the protests are the result of US/CIA attempts to overthrow the communist government. Here’s a sample:

Yes, in many places across the country, especially in big cities with serious epidemics, “scenes” of “gathering crowds to make trouble” suddenly appeared in strange and organized places. These rioters seemed to gather “accidentally”, but they ” Strictly organized and disciplined”, there are unified slogans and slogans, these slogans are full of the taste of “Western-style cooking seed oil”; Also soon, there are dedicated people to take pictures and write rhythmic essays on the Internet.

You said, there is no black hand behind this? I don’t believe it, and neither do the people passing by!…

What these people want is not the so-called freedom, let alone the so-called truth. What they want is a spark to ignite public opinion, a fuse to detonate “group anger”, and a breakthrough to break through China’s ideological defense wall. This is what the CIA and its NGOs and executioners have been doing for decades!

Meanwhile, the police part of this police state is hard at work cracking down on people. The Times highlighted these clips from Guangzhou, a major city along the coast near Hong Kong. In the first one, protesters were demanding an end to lockdowns and throwing bottles at police. In the second one, cops with clubs and riot shields are marching through the streets in a show of force. Notice the massive armored RV that is following them.

视频补充 pic.twitter.com/Gf9dDqzmP4

— 李老师不是你老师 (@whyyoutouzhele) November 28, 2022

But the real action happens when police single people out and show up at their homes making threats. You probably remember this is what happened to Dr. Li Wenliang after he tried to spread the word about COVID.

“When the police came to my door, I had to delete my text records,” said a Beijing resident who joined a protest vigil near the Liangma River on Sunday night. She asked that only her surname, Chen, be used, citing fear of police reprisals.

The sad fact is that Xi Jinping’s China is designed to resist any attempts to change it, especially from within. It will take a lot more than some disorganized protests to end his dictatorship. If  all else fails he can always roll in the tanks.