You're listening to an AirWave Media Podcast.

China locked down update, November 27th, 2022.

The winter of our discontent.

How did you go bankrupt, Bill asked.

Two ways, Mike said, gradually and then suddenly.

From the sun also rises by earnest Hemingway.

It's impossible for me to sit here now on this Sunday morning and know what any of this may be leading toward or headed for or what it ultimately will mean if anything.

I'm no prognosticator and I've got no crystal ball.

All I can really say is that this is the angriest that I've seen China in my whole long tenure here and what must certainly be the first instance of widespread multi city protests directed at whole or in part at the central government's action and inaction.

Happening in public since probably 1989.

All over the country from Zhengzhou to Guangzhou, Nanjing, Beijing, Shanghai.

All the way out west to all places or um Chi.

People have been taking to the streets to demonstrate sometimes using physical force or just pleasure with the state of things in China today.

Why are these people so angry?

Well, there are at least three major through lines of this wide and spreading public airing of grievance.

One, labor disputes, company policy and police strike breaking and excessive use of force at the Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou.

Two, the tragic terrible deadly fire in RMG and the government's failure to contain the blaze and then attempt to squelch public outcry.

But unsurprisingly, the common thread through all this is three.

The unrelenting and indeed expanding and tightening COVID zero policy and the terrible cost it continues to stochastically inflict upon individuals, businesses and the very concept of normality.

So let's take a look at each of these in turn.

First, Zhengzhou, the capital city of central China's Hanan province.

It's home to the world's largest Foxconn factory, the company behind making many of the components necessary to make products such as the iPhone.

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