Beijing, Sep 29 (IANS) The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has failed to change the spirit of defiance that many people in China have, despite the party trying to restrict the ability of citizens to grasp the extent of ‘lying flat’ and public protests, a report has detailed.
“Recent propaganda and censorship efforts by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have revealed an urgent desire among party leadership to blunt a spirit of defiance within Chinese society. Despite the party’s attempts to curb dissent. However, China’s citizens continue to defy authority, as evidenced by recent findings of Freedom House’s China Dissent Monitor (CDM),” a report in Washington-based ‘Freedom House’ mentioned.
Earlier this year, China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) carried out a campaign that blamed “foreign forces” for funding the spread of “lying flat” in China, a term used to describe the rejection of societal expectations that push people to seek material and social achievement. A popular vlogger sarcastically said that he wanted to “report” foreign forces as they did not pay him despite his efforts to “lie flat”.
The CCP has been concerned since the concept of “lying” flat became popular, showcasing resistance to the party’s designs for the people of China and the rise in the number of citizens who do not care about or back the idea of working harder to contribute to a more powerful state. Chinese President Xi Jinping has spoken against the lying flat attitude of people.
The slow economic growth of China has further increased the popularity of lying flat and other forms of societal opposition, including protests. The CDM project has reported an increase in public protests, many of which are being held over economic grievances like unfinished housing or unpaid salaries, according to the report in Freedom House.
As discontent among people has been growing in China, the CCP has been intensifying censorship efforts. According to CDM’s recent report, the censorship campaign by the CCP led to a decrease in information about protests published on Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok). An analysis of nearly 3,000 Douyin posts about protests conducted by CDM revealed that two-thirds had been deleted, with the majority of them being about protests that were likely to involve government malfeasance, according to the report in Freedom House.
According to the recent CDM report, people sometimes even mobilise in response to the Chinese government’s efforts to silence them. In June, peaceful protests held over an animal abuse case in Chongqing transformed into a large demonstration which lasted four days. This spirit of defiance is also seen in residential neighbourhoods of China, where disputes between house owners and property management firms over fees and misconduct have resulted in an increase in the number of protests. According to CDM, a total of 5,343 dissent events occurred in 2025, the highest annual number of protests recorded by the project, demonstrating a 44 per cent rise over the previous year.
“Through media controls, the CCP attempts to restrict citizens’ ability to grasp the extent of lying flat and public protests in China, but it fails to fundamentally alter the spirit of defiance that so many of the country’s citizens possess. International actors—especially those with large public platforms—can help by amplifying the everyday protest of people in China who are acting in defiance of a party-state that seeks to silence them,” Kevin Slaten mentioned in a report in the Freedom House.
–IANS
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