China races to squelch unrest as signs of economic malaise spread

A spate of deadly attacks in China in recent weeks—including mass stabbings and car-ramming incidents—has unnerved officials and ordinary people alike, raising concerns that stagnating growth has played a role in fueling unrest and even outbursts of violence, amid an increase in public protests over economic grievances.

In response, the Communist Party’s security czar last month ordered nationwide efforts to “resolve conflicts at the grassroots and nip them in the bud." China’s top prosecutor urged officials to better protect the rights of low-income workers, job-seeking graduates and vulnerable groups such as the elderly as a way to “strictly prevent extreme cases from happening."

Officials have fanned out to screen for people who have suffered financial or emotional setbacks and assess their risks of disrupting public order. Authorities also deployed paramilitary troops to help guard some schools in Beijing and elsewhere, after some recent attacks appeared to target students. Internet censors, meanwhile, have scrubbed viral commentaries about weaknesses in the world’s second-largest economy.

At its latest meeting this month, the party’s elite Politburo implicitly acknowledged the connection between economic difficulties and social unrest, ordering officials to “protect people’s livelihoods" with the goal of “ensuring the overall stability of society."

Xi’s challenges are formidable. Millions of young Chinese struggle to find jobs. Homeowners have been watching their property values sink, while others worry that debt-laden developers might not finish building the apartments they bought. Many migrant workers and even some government employees aren’t getting paid.

Beijing is also bracing for Donald Trump’s imminent return to the White House, with the president-elect’s promises of heavy tariffs likely to heap more stress on the Chinese economy.

Academics and activists have long tried to track protests in China as a way to assess social currents. While such unrest has typically stemmed from localized issues, such as unpaid wages and land seizures, recent dissent also reflects disillusionment among many younger and middle-class Chinese who face bleaker economic prospects, said Christian Göbel, a professor at the University of Vienna who researches state-society relations in China.

“If the party cannot protect its people and cannot make the economy grow—and these are two things that it has placed its legitimacy on—there is a problem for the party," Göbel said.

The risks of societal spillover could also complicate Xi’s efforts to better fortify the nation for prolonged tensions with the West.

“We must firmly adhere to the bottom line of secure development," Li Zheng, vice president of the Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing, said in late November at an academic conference that examined links between the economy and the risks of social unrest. He said that China’s development was facing unprecedented challenges.

While authorities have long ceased publishing statistics on “mass incidents," the official lingo for public protests, activists tracking unrest in China say their partial data indicate festering tensions.

China Dissent Monitor, a platform run by Washington-based rights advocacy group Freedom House, has tracked more than 7,000 instances of public unrest across the country over the past 2½ years—with more than 46% of incidents related to worker protests and more than a quarter involving property owners.

By tracking social media, news reports and other sources, the platform documented a marked increase in public protests this year, mostly driven by economic grievances such as unpaid wages, stalled housing projects and demands for refunds from failed businesses, said Kevin Slaten, a Freedom House researcher who oversees China Dissent Monitor.

In October, China Dissent Monitor counted 435 protests, the highest monthly tally since it started tracking such data, and the first time in about two years that the platform logged more property-related protests than instances of labor unrest.

“The party may choose to make greater use of a powerful repressive apparatus that it has built and invested in over decades, but that too carries risk of backlash," Slaten said.

The dissent today is all the more striking given that Xi’s government has tightened curbs on protests of any kind, including economic ones spurred by labor or financial disputes that aren’t overtly political.

Xi has also placed a greater emphasis on pre-empting disputes, particularly through what he calls an updated version of the “Fengqiao experience," a Mao-era practice of mobilizing locals to monitor their own communities and mitigating social tensions at source, scholars say.

The recent attacks provide extreme examples of what can happen when that strategy fails. On Nov. 11, a man killed 35 people by driving a car into a crowd at a sports stadium in the southern city of Zhuhai. The police said in a preliminary report about the incident that the suspect was unhappy with how assets had been split up in a divorce.

Days later, eight people were killed in a knife assault at a vocational college by a former student who authorities said had grown frustrated from failing an exam and over the pay he received during an internship.

Earlier knife attacks in recent months also targeted foreigners in China, including Japanese nationals—one of whom, a 10-year-old boy, died—and four instructors from a U.S. college who were in China as part of a partnership program with a local university.

In recent weeks, some parents of schoolgoing children have noticed heightened security at elementary schools in Beijing, where authorities have deployed paramilitary police officers—dressed in camouflage uniforms—to guard the entrances, according to social-media posts.

Police in Sui county in central China said they brought in paramilitary troops, armed with assault rifles, to help protect schools during peak hours when pupils arrive and leave. In the southern city of Foshan, residents buzzed on social media over how many local schools and kindergartens had placed concrete barriers or metal barricades outside their entrances—apparently to prevent car-ramming attacks.

Elevated security is being paired with a suppression of information about the recent attacks, with many media outlets hewing to brief statements from authorities without providing much context. “On the surface this looks like a form of stricter social governance," Yan Zhihua, a researcher at Nanjing University’s Zijin Media Think Tank wrote in a recent Chinese magazine commentary. “But behind it is actually a purging of the information environment, which can cause society’s natural adjustment mechanisms to fail."

More broadly, the party has continued to suppress negative commentary about China’s economy. In recent days, internet censors appeared to scrub separate speeches by two Chinese economists after they went viral, while seemingly curbing access to their social-media accounts.

One of them, Fu Peng, chief economist at Northeast Securities, a Chinese brokerage, purportedly warned at a November conference that policy missteps could arise when observers—fearful of being denounced as unpatriotic—avoid speaking candidly about the economy, according to transcripts and recordings circulated online.

This month, Gao Shanwen, chief economist at state-owned brokerage SDIC Securities, said China’s post-Covid economic data showed weaker consumption growth in provinces with younger populations compared with regions with older residents—a phenomenon observers describe as “vibrant old people, lifeless young people, and hopeless middle-aged people."

Many young people can’t find jobs or are disappointed with the work they get, Gao told a conference, according to transcripts and videos circulated online. “Young people are scrimping on clothing and food, turning off the lights and eating noodles."

Earlier this month, a Chinese news outlet said Fu’s video account on the WeChat social-media app was blocked from accepting new followers, though access appeared normal as of Sunday. Gao’s public WeChat account has since disappeared. Fu and Gao didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Write to Chun Han Wong at chunhan.wong@wsj.com and Brian Spegele at Brian.Spegele@wsj.com