The Dangerous Wisdom of Chinese Crowds
In China, the crowd has played a revolutionary role on more than one occasion. Now, it is forcing the Chinese Communist Party to resolve its Covid-19 “trilemma,” with potentially momentous consequences.
Crowd-pleasers?
Source: Bloomberg/BloombergNever underestimate the power of the revolutionary crowd. It has swept through Paris time and again — in 1789, 1830, 1848, 1871 and 1968 — unseating kings, emperors and presidents. In Petrograd and Moscow in 1917 the crowd toppled the tsar and then brought Lenin to power. Those who took to the streets in Leipzig and Berlin in 1989 know what the revolutionary crowd can achieve — as do those who were in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in 2011 (and again in 2013) or Kyiv’s Maidan in 2014.
In China, too, the crowd has played a revolutionary role on more than one occasion. Its unexpected reappearance in multiple Chinese cities last week was therefore an event of great consequence.