Why Does Xi Jinping Want to Ban the Public from Celebrating New Year’s Eve?

Why Does Xi Jinping Want to Ban the Public from Celebrating New Year’s Eve?

[People News] At the juncture from New Year’s Eve 2025 to New Year’s Day 2026, a rather rare phenomenon of “tightened New Year’s Eve controls” appeared in many cities across the country: some second- and third-tier cities directly canceled official New Year’s Eve events; in many places fireworks were banned ahead of time and public squares were cleared in advance; in some cities, subways and buses ended service much earlier than usual on New Year’s Eve; some universities directly required students not to leave campus during the New Year’s Day holiday or to report their whereabouts if they did; in certain places, shopping malls and pedestrian streets even posted notices “advising citizens to celebrate the New Year locally.”

This can no longer be explained away with the old “pandemic prevention and control” rhetoric.

So what exactly has caused the top leadership to show such obvious vigilance toward a New Year’s Eve activity that is originally secular, consumerist, and largely devoid of political color?

Several of the most likely real motivations—probably coexisting at the same time—are roughly as follows (ranked from higher to lower probability). The most core reasons:

1. Not wanting large numbers of young people to gather and generate an “instantaneous shared emotional field”

The nationwide White Paper Movement at the end of 2022 followed a typical path: New Year’s Eve gatherings on Urumqi Middle Road in Shanghai → mourning → anger → nationwide linkage.

When hundreds of thousands of people are at the same place at the same time, sharing the same emotional node and using the same forms of expression (countdowns, fireworks, chanting slogans, turning on phone lights), the speed of emotional contagion is exponential. Once such contagion begins, it is extremely difficult to extinguish in a short period of time.

2. Extreme sensitivity to narratives of “collective loss of control”

The current official narrative relies heavily on projecting an image that “everything is under control.” Once a video appears showing “the whole nation collectively getting overly excited, scenes getting out of control, and uncontrolled slogans being shouted,” even if it lasts only a few seconds, it will seriously damage this sense of “omnipotent control.”

Even if what people are actually shouting is just “Happy New Year” or “Get rich next year,” the images themselves can easily be re-edited into anything.

3. Fireworks = unauthorized “light politics”

In recent years, the deeper logic behind suppressing fireworks has not actually been environmental protection, but this: fireworks are the only remaining way for ordinary people to legally create “spontaneous light” on a large scale. And any spontaneous, unreported “large-area light” is regarded as a potential risk signal within the current surveillance system. (Lighting displays, laser pointers, phone flashlights, flashlight assemblies, etc. have all been tightened to varying degrees.)

4. The rift between consumerist carnival and the official narrative

Over the past two years, the official tone has consistently promoted ideas such as “living frugally,” “young people shouldn’t lie flat and must compete,” and “hard struggle.”

Yet the most typical and exaggerated scenes of consumerist revelry—fireworks rain, countdowns, champagne towers, entire streets dancing wildly—are in severe conflict with this tone. Thus an absurd situation emerges: on the one hand, there is a desperate push to stimulate consumption; on the other hand, there is fear that consumption scenes might look “too joyful.”

Xi Jinping’s real mindset at present is probably: “We are not afraid that you live poorly; what we fear most is that you gather together and look happy.”

Because dissatisfaction caused by poverty can be temporarily suppressed through repression, diversion of contradictions, and cash handouts; but once “collective happiness and loss of control” is seen, it can easily become the prelude to “collective anger and loss of control.” Therefore, the best solution is simply this: don’t let you gather too much, and don’t let you look too happy. New Year’s Eve was originally just a secular moment of collective fantasy. Now it has become a demon-revealing mirror, reflecting who is most afraid of “the people spontaneously, simultaneously, on a large scale, and happily” being together.

Such strict control over public celebrations and gatherings often appears in the late stages of a dynasty. There are similar examples in Chinese history. For instance, during the Yuan dynasty (1280–1368), rulers once banned Lantern Festival lantern fairs and other mass festive activities to prevent potential uprisings and rebellions, because such gatherings could evolve into anti-government actions.

In the late Qing dynasty (late 19th century), monitoring of folk festivals and gatherings was also tightened. One reason was that social unrest and events such as the Taiping Rebellion made the court highly wary of any large crowds—similar to today’s cancellation of New Year’s Eve events amid economic downturn and popular resentment to reduce stability-maintenance pressure.

Public celebrations or spontaneous gatherings often become catalysts for revolutions. For example, the Arab Spring of 2010–2011 began with street protests and festival-like assemblies, rapidly evolving into waves that toppled multiple regimes.

These cases show that rulers’ bans on festival gatherings often stem from fear that “collective happiness” will turn into “collective anger,” just as many places in China today are canceling New Year’s Eve activities to prevent similar scenarios from recurring.

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(Author’s X account)
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