The scary ‘foreign forces’ behind China’s COVID lockdown protests?

When I went to cover a rally against China’s draconian COVID measures beside the Hudson River in Midtown Manhattan last week, I was bombarded by “foreign forces.”

The rally, one of the few in New York echoing the recent uprising in China, took place across the street from the Chinese Consulate. Hundreds of participants lit candles on that chilling winter night to mourn the victims of a fire in a residential building in Urumqi, Xinjiang, which many believed to have been made deadlier by the COVID restrictions. They sang “The Internationale” and the Chinese national anthem as they vowed to fight against oppression. They chanted “Democracy!” and “Freedom!” and called for Chinese leader Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 to step down.

But unlikely as it might seem, “foreign forces” was also a phrase that popped up quite frequently. Some speakers adopted the word in a sarcastic tone. One introduced himself as “a ‘foreign force’ who was born and grew up in China.” Another said he and other participants were indeed “foreign forces” who were trying to have their voices heard by the Chinese government leaders. Every now and then, the participants would chant together, “We are not ‘foreign forces.’”

The phrase came up again when many participants I talked to for interviews declined to give me their whole names. They said they didn’t want to be singled out and labeled as such. “I am not interested in politics. I just want to be able to go back to China to see my mom,” said a young professional named Grace who works in IT and had never participated in any protest before. “If the police call my mom and say I am part of ‘foreign forces,’ she’d have a heart attack.”

The fear is not unfounded. The Chinese government and its nationalistic internet warriors have been trying to deflect the boiling tension by accusing “foreign forces” of instigating the unrest. This is a technique that has been deployed in many other domestic crises in recent years from the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests in 2019 and 2020 to anger over a flood in the city of Zhengzhou that killed more than a dozen people in the subway in 2021. But as I dive into the narrative, I cannot help noticing how much the overblown emphasis on “foreign forces” reminds me of the popular Chinese children’s story “Goo-dong Is Coming” (咕咚来了), in which a scary sound of “goo-dong” sends all residents in the forest running for their lives from a supposed monster. But the sound turns out to be made by a papaya dropping into the lake.

The Chinese government and nationalistic internet commentators have taken the theory seriously. The Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission released a statement on November 29, vowing to “resolutely crack down on infiltration and sabotage activities by hostile forces.” The next day, Hong Kong’s security chief, Chris Tang (鄧炳強 Dèng Bǐngqiáng), warned that the recent protests have demonstrated some “fledging of another color revolution,” and said some anti-China social media channels were involved in organizing.

Nationalistic internet commentators vie to fortify the theory. In a since-deleted Weibo entry (preserved by Google here), the popular internet influencer Chairman Rabbit (兔主席) listed the evidence of “infiltration of foreign organizations,” including, among others, the proximity of the protests in Beijing to foreign embassies, and the presence of reporters from all major foreign media outlets. An article published on Toutiao.com (which, along with TikTok, is owned by ByteDance) with the headline “Color revolution spreads: Colluded riots in many places. Foreign forces exposed” backs its conclusion with references to alleged Hong Kong and Taiwan accents and the English speaking of some protesters.

Some of the conspiracies are being recycled. For example, a claim that placing flowers and candles is not a Chinese way of mourning, which emerged after the flood in Zhengzhou to affirm foreign infiltration, is being used once again against the vigils for the victims of the Urumqi fire. And the claim that someone has paid 500 yuan ($72) per person to recruit protesters can be traced back to allegations made during the Hong Kong protests.

Some of the claims can easily be debunked. Common sense helps. For example, flowers and candles are often present at Buddhist memorials. And Western media organizations were also out in full force at the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which did not prompt any accusations that foreigners are running the Party.

This, of course, doesn’t mean “foreign forces” do not exist. If it is defined as “those who would not like to see the CCP last forever,” then the religious cult Falun Gong, exiled Chinese dissidents, and the anti-Beijing hawks in American politics may all fit the mold.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, I have been working with the Algorithmic Transparency Institute, a project of the National Conference on Citizenship to build up Junkipedia, a database of misinformation. I’ve found a fair amount of misinformation targeting the CCP. For example, the claim that it had managed to contaminate the PCR testing swabs used at some White House events during the high times of the pandemic to transmit the COVID virus to participants, or that it had worked with U.S. President Joe Biden to steal the midterm elections.

During the recent protests in China, when a big crowd gathering on Wulumuqi Road in Shanghai attracted attention from the world, an inflammatory post was briefly circulating on social media platforms from Twitter to some chat groups on WeChat. It showed a blurred picture of what seemed to be the backs of a few Chinese policemen and a caption announcing a female protester was shot dead, declaring: “Xi Jinping has killed people at Wulumuqi Road in Shanghai. Please repost this as soon as possible.”

But these examples of anti-CCP misinformation are the exception rather than the norm: Way more misinformation that I’ve encountered seems to carry a clear watermark of the Chinese propaganda apparatus. For example, there are reports that the U.S. was pulling patients dying from COVID out of hospitals and dumping them in mass graves, about uncontrollable riots in the U.S., and that the U.S. has built bio-weapon labs in Ukraine.

Indeed, with its impenetrable internet firewall, ubiquitous surveillance cameras, advanced facial recognition technology, and well-oiled censorship apparatus, it is hard to imagine any “foreign forces” would succeed in an information war with China inside China’s own borders.

In fact, during the COVID lockdown demonstrations, the idea of “foreign forces” seems to have been sarcastically co-opted by many protesters. A protester at a Beijing rally wittily quipped after someone warned the crowd about the infiltration of foreign forces: “We can’t even access foreign websites, where are the foreign forces? How would they communicate with us?” he said.

Indeed, at the rally in New York, a young woman with cascading black hair went on the stage to read a poem, and at some point, people in the crowd composed of Han Chinese, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hongkongers, exiled 1989 Tiananmen protesters, LGBTQ activists, and others started to repeat the verses in unison after her.

We are the “low-end population” kicked out in a prosperous era, we are the “foreign forces” crying out in a dark room, we are the Hongkongers who lost homes, we are the Uyghurs who lost freedom…We still stand here today, we will be standing here tomorrow. Because it’s my duty.