The Twitter-X account “Teacher Li Is Not Your Teacher” has spread the news and images of three banners that were hung from an overpass in the Chinese city of Chengdu on Tuesday in what Breitbart calls “a daring echo of the famed ‘Bridge Man’ protest in 2022.”
The banners say:
Without political system reform, there will be no national rejuvenation.
The people do not need a political party with unrestrained power.
China does not need anyone to point out the direction. Democracy is the direction.
Li Ying’s Twitter-X account is widely followed by people in China who use virtual private networks to evade China’s Great Firewall. His readers almost continuously send him information subject to censorship in China in hopes that he will publicize it for them. The channel got its start as this kind of clearinghouse in 2022, when Li began reporting on the White Paper protests against China’s hyper-restrictive COVID-19 policies.
China’s censors scurried into action when images of the banners hung in Chengdu began appearing on social media. But once Li, who is based in Italy, published the photos, sent to him by the man who had hung the banners, there was no way to prevent many in China from learning what had happened and what the banners said.
Radio Free Asia reports that “a second follow-up post on the same X account on Tuesday evening confirmed that the man who had shared the information with Mr. Li had been out of contact for more than 13 hours.
“ ‘The last thing he wanted to convey to the public through us was that he hoped democracy could be realized as soon as possible,’ according to the final post at 07:58 pm Beijing time on Tuesday.”
Also see:
The New York Times: “ ‘I Have No Future’: China’s Rebel Influencer Is Still Paying a Price”
