"There is nothing intrinsically wrong with a biopolitical commitment to maintaining life in a pandemic … the problem is that the CCP’s overwhelming priority is its own legitimacy, with viral suppression becoming the locus of legitimising narratives during the pandemic. In this sense, the biosecurity embodied in China’s response to Covid-19 was less about ‘the securing of collective life against risk’, and more about securing the life of the Party."

https://madeinchinajournal.com/2022/12/02/biopolitical-binaries-or-how-not-to-read-the-chinese-protests/

#a4revolution #China

Biopolitical Binaries (or How Not to Read the Chinese Protests)

On 26 November 2022, prompted by a deadly fire in a highrise apartment block in Ürümqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, protesters took to streets and university campuses across China calling for an end to the country’s restrictive ‘zero Covid’ policy (清零政策) (Davidson and Yu 2022). Unsurprisingly, the libertarian right, anti-maskers, and […]

Made in China Journal
"So, while the Chinese protesters are demonstrating against the authoritarian pandemic governance they have been subjected to, it would be a profound misreading of the protests to conclude that they are demanding the nihilistic necropolitics of the United States and other Western countries. To put it as unequivocally as possible: the protesters in China and the anti-mask/anti-vaxx protesters in the United States, Canada, and Europe are not the same."
@kerim this was a fascinating essay and has given me a whole reading list. And a new publication to watch!