A documentary maker manages the extraordinary during China’s pandemic: a film about the protests that brought lockdowns to an end.

By Probe International

“Ürümqi Middle Road” is a 77-minute documentary by Chinese film-maker Chen Pinlin, better known by his pseudonym Plato. Pinlin’s film marks an extraordinary moment in recent Chinese history when anti-government protests erupted in response to a fatal fire in a high-rise residential apartment during one of China’s lockdown cycles.

Located in Ürümqi, the capital of Xinjiang and China’s largest province, COVID-19 restrictions are believed to have hampered escape and rescue efforts for tenants of the building in the Uyghur-majority neighborhood when fire broke out on Nov. 24, 2022. The blaze, which resulted in ten deaths, all Uyghurs, and an estimated nine injured, served as the flashpoint for protests in China’s major cities (even internationally), as demonstrators demanded an end to pandemic controls, with some calling for President Xi Jinping to step down and China’s one-party rule system to follow him.

“Ürümqi Middle Road” (as it is called in Chinese and “Not the Foreign Forces” in English*) captures on-the-ground footage of citizens, mainly youth, as they spill onto the streets to sing and chant for lockdown relief, venting the pent-up frustration of years inflamed by the apartment fire. Pinlin shows people as we are rarely able to see them, thanks to China’s vast crowd control infrastructure, challenging the government in public and expressing themselves openly.

We hear calls for “human rights!” … “disclosure of the number of deaths!” … “freedom of the press!” … “vindication for June 4!” (the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests) … “freedom of speech.” We even hear shouts of “we don’t want the Communists,” “step down Xi Jinping, step down!” and “we don’t want dictatorship, we want democracy.”

All of the inutterables President Xi and the Chinese Communist Party try to suppress through a vast surveillance network and crackdowns on rights and freedoms tumbles out in the heat of anger. The people of “Ürümqi Middle Road” have had enough, its youth in particular.

The wave of demonstrations set off by the apartment fire in late 2022 soon became known as the “white paper movement”. When protesters gathered to hold a vigil for fire victims on Nov. 26, blank pieces of white paper became the placards of choice to symbolize censorship and all that ordinarily cannot be said, serving as a powerful “voice” as protests quickly grew in strength and number.

Director Chen Pinlin compiled “Ürümqi Middle Road” from footage of thousands of mostly young people in street protests from the eruption of late November 2022, which is also said to be the first time that he had participated in a political event. It is believed the finished film was uploaded to YouTube in early December 2023 under the pseudonym Plato. In less than a week, after generating thousands of views, Plato’s X account was deleted and his YouTube channel was made private.

Radio Free Asia reports Pinlin (Plato) was detained not long after the film was posted on the go-to charge of suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking troubles.” Described as the most well-worn statute in China’s criminal code, the offense is an ambiguous catch-all commonly applied to activities deemed undesirable by authorities but not technically illegal, such as online speech or advocacy. The charge, which can be used to punish small-time offenders with unjustly long sentences, carries with it a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison for first-time offenders.

Held at Shanghai’s Baoshan District Detention Center, Pinlin was formally arrested for the same charge on Jan. 5, 2024, RFA reports. It is believed his case was transferred to the local prosecutor’s office on Feb. 18. A woman who helped Pinlin to produce “Ürümqi Middle Road” has been released on bail, a source close to the case told RFA.

Voice of America (VOA), in interviews with participants at protests spurred by the Ürümqi fire, notes a greater willingness to demonstrate if necessary as the legacy of that time. One young woman who attended a protest in the Liangmaqiao area of Beijing, told VOA she had no regrets and that the white paper movement continued to inspire young people and college students.

“I know that if we didn’t go that night, Beijing would have to be closed for who knows how long,” she said. “After the white paper movement, everyone may have gone through a process of gradually overcoming fear. … For Halloween in Shanghai, some people covered their bodies with white paper,” she said.

A young man arrested for being at the intersection on Ürümqi Middle Road, where the protests began, told VOA the white paper movement was China’s most confrontational national movement since the student-led Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 that ended with a bloody massacre of participants.

Probe International will post updates regarding Chen Pinlin’s status as information becomes available.

“Ürümqi Middle Road” is posted for play below.

*The English title for the documentary – “Not the Foreign Forces” – is a reference to the “hostile foreign forces” frequently blamed by Beijing for instigating protests.