China Protests Due To Labor, Property Issues Rise, Report Says

(Bloomberg) -- China experienced a rising number of protests late last year, according to a new report, adding to the worries of officials trying to engineer an economic rebound.  

Some 952 “dissent events” were recorded in the fourth quarter, the most in any such period of 2023, according to Freedom House's China Dissent Monitor project.

Some 61% of incidents were related to labor issues, while 17% were linked to housing, said China Dissent Monitor, which began collecting data in mid-2022. About 18% of the protests occurred in the manufacturing powerhouse of Guangdong, the most of any province. 

Gloom over the outlook for the world's second-largest economy is weighing on its recovery, keeping demand for goods low. China's youth unemployment hit a record 21.3% in June last year. The government temporarily stopped publishing the data, then it said the rate improved in December after policymakers tweaked their methodology on the figure.

Protests aren't rare in China but they're typically small and focused on local issues. Fear of reprisal, heavy surveillance and tight controls over the internet mean people rarely direct criticism at the higher echelons of power or pose any kind of existential threat to the leadership.

In late 2022, China experienced its most widespread demonstrations in decades as the public grew weary of stringent rules to curb the spread of Covid-19. Some of the protesters focused on Chinese leader Xi Jinping, whose government later started to dismantle its Covid Zero system.

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