‘We just want to live in a normal world’: China’s young protesters speak out, and disappear

People hold white sheets of paper in protest against Covid restrictions then in place while commemorating victims of a fire in Urumqi, China, at a rally in Beijing last November. Photograph: Thomas Peter/Reuters

Cao Zhixin was an ordinary young woman with no political ambition, but a fateful decision to take to the streets one night last year has inadvertently turned her into the face of resistance in China.

“She was just a girl who was keen on books, she didn’t have great ambitions,” says a close friend who spoke to the Guardian but requested anonymity for fear of reprisals. “She said all she wanted was a husband, kids and a warm bed.”