They are alarmed by potential signs of disloyalty within the police system after anti-CCP banners were left hanging for hours in Chengdu.
Chinese authorities are grappling with internal alarm following a rare public protest in Southwest China, where three large banners denouncing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were displayed on an overpass in a busy commercial district—and remained in place for nearly three hours before being removed.
According to Chinese dissident Yuan Hongbing, who spoke to The Epoch Times citing an insider, Beijing’s alarm stemmed not from the content of the protest banners, but rather, a potentially crumbling foundation in the CCP’s tightly controlled surveillance state.
The banners, unfurled in the early morning of April 15 near the Chadianzi Bus Terminal in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, carried bold messages calling for democratic reform.
“Without political system reform, there will be no national rejuvenation,” “The people do not need a political party with unrestrained power,” and “China does not need anyone to point out the direction, democracy is the direction,” they read.
The phrase “point out the direction” frequently appears in Chinese state media regarding CCP leader Xi Jinping, often in headlines such as “Xi points out the direction for education reform” or “Xi points out the direction for the future of the United Nations.”
Photos of the banners briefly circulated on Chinese social media before being swiftly censored. The images were preserved by an overseas Chinese account on the social media platform X that has 1.9 million followers. The post garnered more than 6.4 million views as of April 26.
According to the account’s owner, Italy-based Chinese writer Li Ying, the protester shared the photos with her in order to gain broader attention. A screenshot of his email posted on X by Li shows that during the nearly three hours the banners remained on display, he told Li he had spent a year preparing them. In another message, he noted that many passersby noticed the banners, and some stopped to read.
“I’ll probably be arrested soon. Let’s hope democracy can be realized as soon as possible,” he wrote. According to Li, those were the protester’s final words before he went missing since the morning of April 15.
According to the source, the banners went unnoticed by the authorities for nearly two hours until they were discovered by a patrol officer. Even more unusual, the source said, was the response from the officer’s superiors: Rather than ordering immediate removal, they instructed the officer to preserve the scene “as evidence,” allowing the banners to remain for another 30 to 40 minutes.
By Olivia Li
