Protests Appear to Be Increasing in China. What Can We Learn from Them?

Even as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has relentlessly suppressed free expression, the China Dissent Monitor (CDM)—Freedom House’s initiative to track dissent in the country—has revealed that protests take place regularly in every region of China. Marking its third year of research this June, CDM has documented more than 10,000 protest actions, ranging from rural residents protesting land development to nationwide demonstrations against the unprecedented social controls of the government’s zero-COVID-19 policy. The insights that CDM gains into protest actions often shed light on broader trends within China: for example, the recent increase in demonstrations against unscrupulous residential property management companies has exposed another layer of the country’s complex economic woes.

Earlier this year, CDM was taken offline for several months after the US State Department abruptly terminated a grant supporting the project, as part of a broader effort by the new US administration to scale back and realign foreign assistance expenditures. With the generous help of private donors, the site was restored. But CDM, the world’s most comprehensive public repository of dissent occurring in China, needs additional support to continue its critical research. Below, we take advantage of three years of CDM data to reassess the trend lines we revealed across nine quarterly reports, underscoring the depth of our research and the value of amplifying the voices of ordinary people who speak out in the face of authoritarian rule.

Economic protests among urban and rural groups

CDM first observed an increase in labor protests—such as strikes over unpaid wages—in early 2023 after the end of pandemic controls. We predicted that these might be linked to a broader economic downturn in China. As the ensuing economic malaise has dragged on, CDM’s latest data suggest that labor dissent has indeed continued to rise; the 1,219 labor protests we documented in the first half of 2025 represent a 66 percent increase compared with the same period in 2024.

The data we collected also suggest that China’s slowing economy has prompted protests beyond those related to labor. Since CDM’s inaugural report, we’ve charted a steady rise in protests by homebuyers and homeowners amid a deepening financial crisis in China’s real-estate sector. We explored the grievances of people who purchased property in stalled housing projects and of unpaid construction workers in a 2023 op-ed. In Issue 8 last year, we observed that, given the persistence of these protest events, the central government’s efforts to address problems in the real-estate sector through subsidies, loan programs, and other tools were proving inadequate.

CDM’s latest data indicate that these trends have endured or even accelerated in recent months: we recorded 1,220 protests linked to the housing sector in the first half of 2025, double the number of events in the first half of 2023 or 2024. There has been a particularly sharp rise in homeowners protesting against the unscrupulous practices of property management companies—such as sudden price increases or the use of a community’s shared spaces for side businesses—with nearly the same number of events in the first six months of 2025 as in the previous two years combined.

Beyond workers and homeowners, CDM research has identified additional groups that have protested as the economy slows. The 85 protests led by consumers, investors, and small-business owners in the second quarter of 2025 represent a 200 percent year-on-year increase, extending an upward trend reported by CDM in Issue 9. Retiree protests over unpaid benefits or disfavored local-government policies have also persisted since CDM first reported on a relative increase in such events in 2023. These incidents are driven by sudden business closures, cash-strapped firms, and indebted local governments, suggesting that the impact of China’s economic pain may be broadening.

While much of the dissent described so far is centered in urban areas, rural protest also appears to be climbing. In Issue 8, CDM analysis projected that protests by rural residents against local governments or developers over land disputes were likely to persist because the CCP appeared unable or unwilling to fully address the long-standing issues driving this widespread conflict—namely, corruption and unfairness in land-acquisition processes. While the central government rolled out new rules in July 2024 to loosen restrictions on rural land use, CDM has documented a 44 percent rise in protests over land disputes since that month. The fact that the protests have yet to abate suggests that implementation of these policy responses is lacking.

Protesting across the nation

From the beginning of the project, CDM has observed the development of decentralized protest movements—a kind of mass mobilization that lacks a leader or a clear organizational structure, but can still have significant influence across society. The White Paper Movement against pandemic lockdown restrictions and government censorship at the end of November 2022 is one well-known example of a decentralized protest campaign.

However, CDM data revealed a series of anti-lockdown protests in the preceding months that culminated in the nationwide protests of November 2022, providing novel insight on the breadth and power of dissent in China. In addition, near the end of 2024, CDM uncovered an unreported protest movement across 11 cities against a new legal provision that made former shareholders responsible for the liabilities of indebted companies. We shared this documentation with Reuters, which published a report on it.

CDM has observed numerous other protest movements that stretch across municipal and provincial boundaries, including those against corruption and malfeasance, stalled housing, and sexual harassment. Such movements show that even under enduring one-party authoritarianism, citizens in China are finding ways to link their acts of dissent through symbolism, without centralized coordination.

An essential resource

As the CCP under Xi Jinping has deliberately dismantled civil society and movement networks over the past decade, patterns of dissent have become more difficult for anyone to detect—especially in China’s heavily manipulated media environment, where information about dissent is quickly deamplified or deleted. The ability to uncover and follow up on trends like those discussed here depends on regular monitoring and analysis of information from varied sources.

With its unique analysis and public database of both quantitative and vivid visual evidence, CDM is a critical resource for people outside and inside China who seek to understand the country’s social and political developments. While we have found initial success in reviving our operations since the State Department grant termination, the future of CDM as a public resource hinges on continued financial support.

We urgently need more investment to sustain our work in the months and years to come. We invite you to pledge your support so that we can continue to document dissent, inform policymakers, and spotlight the many brave individuals who are fighting for their basic rights in China.

This article was produced in part with research from CDM analysts Ming-tse Hung and Irene Wu.