With Intimidation and Surveillance, China Tries to Snuff Out Protests

Reacting to China’s boldest and most widespread protests in decades, the security apparatus built by Communist Party leader Xi Jinping is mobilizing on multiple fronts to quash dissent, drawing on its decades-old tool kit of repression and surveillance.

In a meeting of the party’s top security leaders, reported in state media on Tuesday, officials were ordered to “resolutely crack down on illegal and criminal acts that disrupt social order.” And by evening, the demonstrations already appeared to be smaller and more scattered, with new videos emerging on social media — the main channel for news of the protests to reach a wider audience — showing only groups of residents in several different locked-down developments demanding to be freed.