Since protests began on Friday, Chinese citizens have taken to holding up blank A4 sheets of paper. The paper symbolizes their anger against Chinese authorities and China’s harsh lockdown measures.

People hold sheets of blank paper in protest against COVID restrictions in China during a vigil on November 28, 2022, in Hong Kong’s central district. Paper has become a symbol of defiance.

The antecedents of white-paper protests stretch back at least as far as 1924, when a Krakow newspaper reportedly published a blank special supplement as a satirical rebuke to censors. In 1965, an ...

Demonstrators hold blank signs during a protest in Beijing, China, on Monday, Nov. 28, 2022. Bloomberg via Getty Images “The white paper represent [s] everything we want to say but cannot say ...

In Hong Kong in 2020, activists also raised blank sheets of white paper in protest to avoid slogans banned under the city's new national security law, which was imposed after massive and sometimes ...

In Shanghai, a vigil grew into a street protest where many held blank sheets of white paper in a symbol of tacit defiance. In Beijing, students at Tsinghua University raised signs showing a math ...