China: old people demonstrate en masse

DAY

New major protests have just broken out in China. This time it is the elderly who take to the streets. 

The reason for their anger is simple: in several regions, their medical aid benefit, with which they buy among other drugs, has been reduced by two thirds.

The situation is not the same throughout China. Medical aid benefits are administered at the locality level.

The situation is particularly dire in Wuhan, the city where the COVID-19 virus originated.

The news was quickly censored on Chinese social networks.

Economic crisis

In any case, the abrupt reduction of medical aid benefits in localities as well as the demonstrations of the elderly speak volumes about the crisis that the Chinese economy is going through and the danger that the Chinese Communist Party is incurring. 

Older people are generally highly respected in China. Significantly reducing their medical benefits all at once is a political move that the majority of the Chinese population frowns upon.

The pressure of COVID-19 on the health care system does not explain to them only this decision.

The growth rate of the economy far below expectations, the slump in real estate and construction, the fall in internal consumption, global inflation and poor management also explain these cuts.

< p>New wave of reprobation

The Chinese Communist Party is thus grappling with a new wave of demonstrations, after those of November against the radical measures to control COVID-19 . 

While the demonstrations in November were mostly young people and therefore unfamiliar with the fierce repression of which the Communist Party is capable, those of these days are led by older people who know history, for having lived it.

This reprobation further weakens Xi Jinping's position. A new government is to be announced in March. Will Xi succeed in placing his followers there as he planned?