China Protesters Flip Police Car, Unrest Reaches 'Tipping Point'

China's first anti-Communist Party protest of 2023 featured demonstrators flipping a police car over a nationwide fireworks ban, according to videos posted to social media.

And experts say the protests have reached "a tipping point" that might mean a year of unrest.

Protesters set off fireworks in defiance of the ban, and as police tried to squelch the dissent, a police car was overturned in Hongdaoyuan Square in Henan's Luyi County, on Monday, Radio Free Asia reported.

Video of the destruction of the police car and its flipping was posted Tuesday to Twitter.

Police arrested six in the "chaos at the scene," according to the report.

Other videos showed a man jumping on a police car and another holding up the police license plate over his head.

"It's another revolution, or at least passing on the torch," political commentator Wang Jian told RFA. "The Chinese have learned that they can use protest to get what they want, which is a huge improvement on the way things were."

China had banned fireworks until the Lunar New Year later this month, but New Years' celebrations defied the ban.

"There have been sporadic fireworks going off in my neighborhood, and the surrounding area," Jia Lingmin told RFA. "[The ban] will be lifted at some point during Lunar New Year."

The protests are a continuation of the unrest over China's one-time COVID policies that sought to limit the spread of the coronavirus, which has recently ravaged the country after constraints were lifted, according to reports.

"Zero-COVID went on for three years," Henan current affairs commentator Li Fatian told RFA, "So it's pretty clear that the lockdowns across the country, large-scale unemployment, and the inhumane enforcement methods of recent years have caused a lot of anxiety and shortness of temper.

"There's a lot of hostility in society."

"Now, the government suddenly removes all restrictions and people still fear dying from this virus, so maybe they need to do this as a way of venting. We've reached what you might call a tipping point."

Wang agrees the protests seem to be setting up a year of unrest in China.

"When the Chinese Communist Party can no longer guarantee that everyone's life will improve, nor guarantee a livelihood to many people, then people will start to challenge it, because what right does it have to remove your political rights?" Wang told RFA.

"The Communist Party has broken the social contract, so they don't have to obey it any more."