Despite intensified CCP censorship and digital surveillance, public defiance in China continues to grow. A new Freedom House report reveals record-breaking protests and rising passive resistance like “lying flat,” exposing the party’s failure to silence mounting economic and social discontent.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has aggressively escalated its digital censorship machinery and propaganda campaigns in a bid to suppress widespread social discontent, yet the party has failed to extinguish the underlying spirit of defiance among its citizens, according to comprehensive findings released by Washington-based research organization Freedom House.
The report, drawing heavily on documentation compiled by the China Dissent Monitor (CDM), underscores a growing chasm between the ruling authorities’ narrative of national unity and the lived realities of ordinary citizens. Despite sweeping digital surveillance, aggressive keyword filtering, and systematic content deletions, public pushback against state policies, economic hardship, and official malfeasance has not abated. Instead, documented instances of public resistance reached historic highs.
Economic Grievances Fuel Widespread Resistance
According to the CDM findings, China recorded a staggering 5,343 dissent events over the course of 2025. This figure represents the highest annual volume of demonstrations recorded since the project began tracking unrest, marking a 44 percent surge compared to the previous year.
Rather than centering on abstract political theory, much of the rising public anger is anchored in tangible, everyday hardships exacerbated by China’s sluggish macroeconomic environment. Citizens across multiple provinces have taken to the streets over unpaid labor wages, stalled property developments, lost personal savings, and predatory practices by local management firms. In urban residential compounds, disputes between homeowners and property managers over exorbitant maintenance fees and mismanagement have repeatedly triggered spontaneous neighborhood rallies.
Compounding this active unrest is the continued cultural traction of the “lying flat” (tang ping) phenomenon—a philosophy centered on personal disengagement and the outright rejection of hyper-competitive societal pressures. For Beijing, the posture represents an existential friction: it directly counters President Xi Jinping’s exhortations for collective sacrifice, rigorous productivity, and national rejuvenation. State unease reached such levels that the Ministry of State Security (MSS) launched targeted messaging campaigns claiming foreign adversaries were secretly funding and promoting “lying flat” ideologies to undermine China’s economic vitality. The allegation drew public ridicule online, with content creators sarcastically questioning where their supposed foreign payouts were.
Systematic Deletions on Social Platforms
To stifle public awareness of these movements, party censors have intensified targeted crackdowns across domestic platforms. A granular analysis by the China Dissent Monitor examined approximately 3,000 protest-related posts published on Douyin, the Chinese domestic counterpart of TikTok. The investigation uncovered that roughly two-thirds of the posts had been completely purged.
Censors acted with particular urgency against visual evidence and discussions that exposed direct government malfeasance, police misconduct, or systemic regulatory failures. By scrubbing real-time clips of demonstrations, authorities seek to prevent localized grievances from cross-pollinating across administrative boundaries or inspiring coordinated regional actions.
A Persistent Spirit of Defiance
The suppression efforts, however, frequently generate blowback. In multiple recorded incidents, state attempts to silence local outrage served as the catalyst for larger mobilizations. During demonstrations in Chongqing following an animal abuse incident, initial official attempts to suppress information catalyzed a sustained, four-day public demonstration.
Kevin Slaten, lead researcher and author at Freedom House, noted that while media manipulation temporarily blinds citizens to the true geographic scale of dissent, it does not solve the root grievances driving them outward.
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“Through media controls, the CCP attempts to restrict citizens’ ability to grasp the extent of lying flat and public protests in China, but it fails to fundamentally alter the spirit of defiance that so many of the country’s citizens possess,” Slaten noted. He emphasized that global observers and organizations with substantial digital reach bear an important responsibility in documenting and amplifying these grassroots actions, ensuring that the voices of citizens defying an entrenched party-state are not erased by digital blackouts.
