Source: China Digital Times (5/1/25)
The Chengdu Overpass Protest and Its Antecedents: “The People Do Not Want a Political Party With Unchecked Power”
By Cindy Carter

The three banners hanging from a pedestrian overpass near Chengdu’s Chadianzi Bus Station. Local netizens confirmed the location of the photo, which is close to Chengdu’s Third Ring Road, based on the street layout and the illuminated signs visible in the background.
In the early hours of the morning of April 15, 2025, a lone protester lashed three long white banners with red, hand-painted political slogans to the railings of a pedestrian overpass near a bus station in Chengdu, and unfurled them to the street below. As he would later confide to the owners of several whistle-blowing social media accounts to whom he turned for help in amplifying his message, it was a protest he had been planning for over a year. The three slogans opposing autocracy and demanding democracy read as follows:
- There can be no “national rejuvenation” without systemic political reform
- The People do not want a political party with unchecked power.
- China does not need someone to “point the way forward.” Democracy is the way forward. [Chinese]
The date of the protest is significant because it was the anniversary of the April 15, 1989 death of former General Secretary Hu Yaobang—who for many symbolizes a more progressive, possibly even more democratic “path not taken.” (In the spring of 1989, mourning for Hu’s death coalesced into the massive protests that would later be crushed in the June 4 Tiananmen crackdown.) The language used in the slogans is quite measured, and references the CCP’s oft-lauded goal of “national rejuvenation.” Although Xi Jinping is not mentioned by name, the third slogan is a clear reference to the standard Party formulation of Xi Jinping “pointing the way forward” on various policy issues (at least 240, by one recent count). Continue reading Chengdu overpass protest