One year on, China's Covid-19 protesters caught between hope and apathy

BEIJING – One year after "white paper" protests flared across China against stringent Covid-19 restrictions, Mr Huang Yicheng fears this rare show of public dissent may eventually be forgotten by the Chinese public amid state censorship. The wave of civil disobedience which erupted on Nov 25, 2022, was unprecedented in President Xi Jinping's decade in power, which has seen a widespread crackdown on civil society. While protests against the zero-Covid policy were quickly suppressed by the police, they helped hasten the end of three years of some of the world's strictest pandemic curbs. "Many protesters experienced being part of a…