The contrast could not be greater: While sheepish and servile crowds are well on the road to serfdom, happily voting in dictators in Victoria, in China, the crowds are bravely protesting tyranny, even at the cost of their own lives! One group prefers servitude, slavery and submission while the other demands freedom. I know which group I stand with.
While Victorian Premier Dan Andrews is not yet fully on par with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, the similarities are too obvious to ignore. Both have been utterly callous and dismissive of basic goods like freedom and human rights. Both have ruled over the harshest and longest lockdowns in the world. Both have a deep contempt for religion, especially Christianity. Both are power-hungry thugs who want to be dictators for life.
During the same weekend when Victorians decided they prefer tyranny over liberty, corruption over integrity and dystopian nightmares over an efficient and productive society, large crowds in China were moving in the exact opposite direction.
The immediate cause of their anger and willingness to lose their lives while taking to the streets was idiotic Covid restrictions that prevented a fire being put out in an apartment building. Not since the Tienanmen Square uprising of 1989 have we seen such large-scale protests like this. And we all know of the brutal and bloody suppression of that freedom movement.
Protests spread to cities and college campuses around China on Saturday night, reflecting rising public anger at the country’s draconian Covid controls, with some in a crowd in Shanghai directing their fury at the Communist Party and its top leader, Xi Jinping.
The wider demonstrations followed an outpouring of online anger and a street protest that erupted Friday in Urumqi, the regional capital of Xinjiang in western China, where at least 10 people died and nine others were injured in an apartment fire on Thursday. Many Chinese people say they suspect Covid restrictions prevented those victims from escaping their homes, a claim the government has rejected.
The tragedy has fanned broader calls to ease China’s harsh regimen of Covid tests, urban lockdowns and limits on movement nearly three years into the pandemic. For much of that time, many accepted such controls as a price for avoiding the widespread illness and deaths that the United States, India and other countries endured. But public patience has eroded this year as other nations, bolstered by vaccines, moved back to something like normal, even as infections continued. And after years of enforcing the strict “zero Covid” rules, many local officials appear worn down.
The widening discontent may test Mr. Xi’s efforts to hold those rules in place. “The demonstrations across the country have been like the spark that lit a prairie fire,” James Yu, a resident of Shanghai, said in an interview, adopting a Chinese phrase used to describe the spread of Mao Zedong’s Communist revolution. “I feel like everyone can make their voice loud and clear. It feels powerful.”
The main thing being chanted by the protesters is this: “We want freedom.” But sadly in Victoria, the main thing being chanted seems to be, “We want more tyranny. We want more statist control. We want more corruption. We want more unaccountable government. We want to bow down and worship Chairman Dan.”
I see two diametrically opposed movements happening here. And take another area: religious freedom. It of course has been smashed in Communist China, and it is being smashed in Victoria. Here, any parent or pastor or priest who simply discusses with or prays for someone unhappy with their sexual attraction can be thrown in prison for ten years!
Khrushchev once said - the Cold War will end when we become more like you and you become more like us. Since the Berlin Wall fell America took a hard turn to the left and we became more like them.
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