The A4 Revolution that erupted in China in the past week is not really a revolution at all, not yet at least. The term revolution implies a sustained movement aimed at overthrowing the Chinese Communist Party. At this stage, the A4 Revolution—named after the size of the printer paper held up at vigils throughout the country—is a series of scattered, spontaneous protests against the brutality and absurdity of “dynamic zero-COVID” lockdowns and quarantines. The blank sheets say nothing and everything at the same time. These protests do not need to topple the regime to have long-term consequences.

Hu’s feeble exit from the stage is a sad symbol of the current trajectory of Chinese politics. Hu, and his allies and protégés, represent a more technocratic, moderate arm of the party—one decidedly less repressive, and more open to the outside world. Xi and his camp have been gaining momentum for a decade but at least had to share some power with Hu’s faction. This arrangement has been put to rest. In its place, China has a single dominant leader surrounded solely by people who enable him, not restrain him.

In confronting the challenges posed by a rising China, U.S. policy makers must remember that the power of the American scientific enterprise lies not simply in the number of citations or patents it generates, but in the number of bright people from every country in the world who want to come here to do research—because of how we conduct science, speak about politics, and provide opportunity regardless of a person’s nation of origin.

A democratic revolution is unlikely to break out anytime soon, but modern Chinese history shows the problems that arise when a single leader becomes too powerful. In the words of the whistle-blower, the late Chinese doctor Li Wenliang, “a healthy society should not have just one voice.”

Through a combination of market coercion and intimidation, the Chinese Communist Party is trying to constrain how people in the United States and other Western democracies talk about China. This encroachment needs a measured response—what we might call freedom-of-speech operations, or FOSOPs for short. American universities can take the lead. They should routinely hold events on the fate of Taiwan, the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, the repression of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, and other topics known to be sensitive to the Chinese government.