The Chicoms have a problem.

Seems the Hong Kong protests they are so desperate to tamp down have started to ignite elsewhere, deep into China's cities.

Here's one the Chicoms really didn't want:

Protesters in southern Guangdong province, China, took to the streets last week to demand the communist government not build a polluting crematorium near their town, adopting slogans common to the Hong Kong protest movement, Time magazine noted on Monday. The Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily, which openly supports the anti-communist movement, reported the use of slogans such as "revolution of our times," which China considers seditious hate speech, and "just like you, Hong Kong!" in Guangdong. As China heavily censors coverage of the Hong Kong protests and bans all statements of support from the few permitted social media sites in the country, the adoption of the Hong Kong movement's slogans and tactics is a sign that people within Communist China are informing themselves regarding the protests through unapproved means.

The Guardian reports that the Chicoms stomped them out, like an out-of-control campfire. But the danger to the regime remains.

As I argued earlier, this is Beijing's worst nightmare come to life:

In short, there's evidence that amid that sea of millions of Hongkongers protesting communism from China, some of them are mainland Chinese. Message: the mainland Chinese are getting ideas. The Chicoms of Beijing cannot wall them out from Hong Kong nor can they stop this. And this raises the specter of what happens when they return to China, because many of these Chinese have their families there, and they will. Are these Chinese going to return back to China and spread that democracy 'virus' they passionately embraced in Hong Kong, kicking off similar protests in Chengdu, Tianjin, Harbin, Shenzhen, Wuhan and other giant cities to duplicate what the Hongkongers launched? It actually seems plausible. What's more, it will be an awakening as Chinese finally come to the realization that they deserve the same freedoms their fellow Chinese in Hong Kong have enjoyed until recently. When ten or twelve Chinese megacities start holding the kinds of protests Hong Kong is holding, Bejing's old gray rulers will have a hell of a problem on their hands. And that is their worst, their very worst, nightmare.

Not only is China failing to keep the revolt in Hong Kong out of the consciousness of the Chinese people, protests now are taking inspiration from the Hong Kongers. And in the worst possible place: in Guangdong province, which is gargantuan and shares a common language with Hong Kong. Here's the Straits Times of Singapore's description of where this is happening:

Guangdong, China's most prosperous province, lies at the heart of the Greater Bay Area — a mega economic zone that includes nine cities in the province, Hong Kong and Macau — and is hungry for capital, talent and technology[.]

Way back in 1995, I made my first trip to Asia on vacation, heading to Hong Kong and staying with two wonderful journalism school buddies. A few days later, I ventured across the border into China, where I met a non-English-speaking Chinese young woman who wanted to show me her home. I got into a taxi with her, and we drove two hours to what was almost certainly a city in Guangdong, staying in China for a surprise two days. I was absolutely fascinated as she took me around and showed me the details of her life, a real privilege for an outsider to have, actually.

I do not know where I went or who I was with, but I learned a heckuva lot about life in China among ordinary Chinese people. Most significant detail: Most people in the area were from somewhere else. My host and the family she lived with were all from Nanjing. They introduced me to people from Harbin, Beijing, Tibet, Shenyang, Wuhan, and areas in the Chinese countryside much less well known. It was like a city of immigrants. They were all new arrivals, and there were Chinese people with blue eyes and snowy skin from the north, Tibetans who looked Asian but didn't resemble the Han Chinese of the south, people who spoke halting English and people who didn't. They were all there with high hopes and big dreams, hoping to make it big in the big relatively coastal city.

Needless to say, they all had ties to many areas in the interior of China. They all had cell phones, or access to them via telephone stands, even in 1995. People like this are a Petri dish for the spreading of ideas. And with Hong Kong inspiring and igniting protests in Guangdong, you can bet word is getting out to all the interior of China.

It really is Beijing's worst nightmare.



Photo montage by Monica Showalter from public domain sources.