“It looks to me as if these are the most significant protests since 1989, and they

“It looks to me as if these are the most significant protests since 1989, and they are, I think, a boiling over of not just frustration at the very draconian COVID lockdowns, but actually rebellion against the very severe repression, the surveillance state that has developed under Xi Jinping over the last decade,” says Benedict Rogers, chief executive of Hong Kong Watch and co-founder of the UK Conservative Party Human Rights Commission.

He’s the author of “China Nexus: Thirty Years In and Around the Chinese Communist Party’s Tyranny.”

As protests flare up across China, what’s really going on? Will the Chinese regime crack down harder? And how should the West respond?