Four years after a lone protester climbed Beijing’s Sitong Bridge, his message continues to travel far beyond China. On 1 October 2026, activists gathered outside Chinese diplomatic missions in London and Manchester ahead of the protest’s fourth anniversary. On 13 October, another rally drew supporters outside the Chinese Consulate in New York. Organisers displayed slogans associated with Peng Lifa and demanded his release. The rallies attracted fewer people than mass protest movements, but their symbolism remained hard to ignore. Chinese authorities removed Peng from the bridge in 2022 and quickly censored discussion of his protest. His name then spread across university campuses, diaspora demonstrations and later acts of dissent inside China. Four years later, observers ask not only what happened to China’s “Bridge Man,” but also why one brief protest proved so difficult to erase.
On 13 October 2022, days before the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th National Congress, a protester wearing construction-worker clothing displayed two banners from Beijing’s Sitong Bridge. The banners attacked China’s zero-COVID restrictions, demanded political reform and elections, and directly challenged Xi Jinping. Police detained the protester, while activists and media reports identified him as Peng Lifa. Chinese censors quickly restricted online discussion of the incident. However, censorship pushed the story outward instead of erasing it. Students and activists placed similar posters at universities in the United States, Canada, Britain, the Netherlands, South Korea and other countries. Human Rights in China later reported that the activist-run Citizens Daily project received more than 1,500 reports of protest slogans at over 328 universities by late October 2022. Weeks later, demonstrators during China’s White Paper protests echoed some of Peng’s demands.
Sitong Bridge became important not because the protest became a mass demonstration at the site, but because images of one person’s act could be copied faster than the physical protest could be erased.
A protest timed for maximum political sensitivity
Peng’s action came three days before the opening of the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th National Congress.
Beijing was preparing for an event that would confirm Xi Jinping’s continued leadership. Security around the capital was especially tight.
Against that backdrop, a lone protester managed to display political messages over one of Beijing’s busy roads.
The banners criticized the zero-COVID system and called for freedom, dignity, political reform and elections. Another message directly called for Xi Jinping’s removal.
The act therefore crossed two of the most sensitive political lines in China at the same time: criticism of a major government policy and direct opposition to the country’s top leader.
“We want food, not COVID tests; freedom, not lockdowns; dignity, not lies.”
The longer banners also called for political reform, elections and citizens’ rights. Their structure made them unusually easy to copy onto posters and banners elsewhere.
The censorship started almost immediately
Police removed Peng and the banners from the bridge. Online suppression followed rapidly.
Search terms and images connected to the protest became difficult to find on major Chinese platforms. Even broad words associated with the event faced heightened censorship.
The physical protest had ended.
The digital afterlife had already begun.
Peng Lifa, also known online as Peng Zaizhou, is widely identified as the man who displayed the banners on Sitong Bridge. Police took the protester away.
Similar slogans begin appearing at universities in North America, Europe and Asia. The protest changes from one man’s action into a reproducible symbol.
Demonstrations erupt in several Chinese cities after the deadly Urumqi apartment fire. Protesters criticize COVID restrictions, censorship and, in some cases, China’s political leadership. Elements of Peng’s language reappear.
Other individuals display political banners in places such as Hunan and Chengdu. Human Rights Watch describes these incidents as showing the influence of earlier acts such as Peng’s protest.
Diaspora political groups stage commemorations in Britain and New York, again calling for Peng’s release.
Why this protest was easy to reproduce
People did not need an organization, manifesto or political party to repeat the core demands. A sheet, marker or poster was enough.
The political timing made the act unusually dramatic and guaranteed international attention.
Images of the bridge could communicate the event even to people who never heard Peng’s name.
Attempts to suppress discussion made the surviving photographs and copies more politically significant outside China’s controlled information environment.
From Sitong Bridge to the White Paper protests
Peng did not single-handedly create the White Paper Movement. The nationwide protests that erupted six weeks later had their own immediate trigger: public anger following a deadly apartment fire in Urumqi.
But his protest had already provided a vocabulary for dissent.
During demonstrations in Shanghai, Beijing and other cities, protesters criticized lockdowns and censorship. Some demanded greater political freedom. In Shanghai, demonstrators even shouted for Xi Jinping and the Communist Party to step down.
Human Rights Watch and other observers have consequently described Peng’s protest as an important precursor to the White Paper Movement.
Stage 1 — A banner in Beijing
The protest is geographically small but visually powerful.
Stage 2 — Posters on overseas campuses
What could not remain publicly visible in Beijing becomes visible thousands of kilometres away.
Stage 3 — Blank sheets inside China
The visual language changes, but the dispute over lockdowns, censorship and political expression becomes much larger.
Stage 4 — Other people return to bridges
In July 2024, Fang Yirong displayed a Peng-inspired banner in Hunan. In April 2025, Mei Shilin placed pro-democracy banners on an overpass in Chengdu. Authorities reportedly detained both.
Stage 5 — The memory moves overseas
The central demand becomes simple: disclose his condition and release him.
Four years later: London, Manchester and New York
The fourth anniversary again demonstrated the international afterlife of the Sitong Bridge protest.
Members of the China Democracy Party and other exiled activists gathered opposite the Chinese Embassy at Portland Place. Organisers reported banners calling for Peng’s release and political change in China.
A parallel gathering took place outside the Chinese Consulate-General. Participants displayed signs supporting Peng and opposing political repression.
Protesters gathered outside the Chinese Consulate on the exact fourth anniversary, calling for Peng’s release and the release of other political prisoners.
But where is Peng Lifa now?
For years, this was the central unanswered question.
After police removed Peng from Sitong Bridge, Chinese authorities did not publicly provide a transparent account of his detention, charges or location.
By 2024, Human Rights Watch described him as forcibly disappeared.
The picture changed in 2025, but only partially.
Images and reporting document police detaining the Sitong Bridge protester on 13 October 2022.
Human Rights Watch’s 2026 World Report says a court reportedly sentenced Peng to nine years in July 2025.
Public information remains limited regarding the complete judgment, proceedings, access to counsel and detailed conditions of imprisonment.
The sentence has been reported by human-rights organisations, including Human Rights Watch. The lack of public information surrounding the case remains part of the controversy.
Peng’s influence did not end with zero-COVID
It would be easy to view Sitong Bridge only as a protest against pandemic restrictions.
That interpretation misses half of what made it politically sensitive.
Peng’s banners linked everyday frustration over COVID controls to broader questions about elections, political accountability, censorship and the concentration of power.
Zero-COVID eventually ended.
The political questions on the banners did not.
That helps explain why later protesters have continued to reference Sitong Bridge even after pandemic restrictions disappeared.
Why one missing protester remains internationally visible
Authoritarian censorship normally tries to separate an act from its audience.
Sitong Bridge demonstrated the limits of that approach in a globally connected information environment.
The banner could be removed.
Its photograph could be copied.
The search term could be blocked.
Its wording could be rewritten on another campus.
The protester could disappear from public view.
His name could still become the subject of rallies four years later.
Reporting & Source Base
Reports that Peng Lifa was reportedly sentenced to nine years in July 2025 and discusses subsequent bridge protests.
Detailed account of Peng’s disappearance following the Sitong Bridge protest and calls for his release.
Documentation of global anniversary commemorations and the overseas campus poster campaign following Sitong Bridge.
Organiser account of fourth-anniversary demonstrations in London and Manchester.
Organiser account of the fourth-anniversary protest outside the Chinese Consulate-General in New York.
Sitong Bridge arrest photograph and Stanford solidarity image, both licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. New York anniversary image is marked public domain.
The fourth anniversary does not prove that Peng Lifa created an organized political movement, nor should every later protest automatically be attributed to him. His significance is more subtle. Sitong Bridge created a political image that others could reproduce: one individual, one visible public space and a message designed to survive beyond the moment of arrest. That pattern appeared on overseas campuses almost immediately and later resurfaced in other banner protests inside China. In 2026, the same memory returned outside Chinese diplomatic missions in London, Manchester and New York. The protesters were separated by countries and years, but they continued to use Peng as a symbol of the risks faced by people who publicly challenge political authority in China.
Four years after Sitong Bridge, the banners themselves are long gone. Zero-COVID is also gone. Yet Peng Lifa remains politically relevant because the larger questions raised by his protest—freedom of expression, elections, censorship and accountability—did not disappear with the pandemic. Human Rights Watch now says he was reportedly given a nine-year prison sentence in 2025, while detailed public information about his case remains limited. His protest lasted only a short time on a Beijing bridge. Its afterlife has lasted years. That may be the most enduring paradox of Sitong Bridge: authorities succeeded in removing the protester from public view, but they never fully succeeded in removing the protest from public memory.
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