Yellow vest protests show populism has globalized

Editor's note: The yellow vest movement in France might lead the country in a different direction, comments Zheng Ruolin, a columnist who lived in France for 20 years, in a post. The following are excerpts from the post:

Usually a protest has a clear objective. Once the goal is realized, the campaign will ebb. But the yellow vest protesters have no clear aims, and the protest is infectious, spreading far beyond France.

Both the right wing and the left wing of French society take part in it, making it an outbreak of populism and people's accumulated anger with French politics and economy, as well as representative democracy, the foundation of Western democracy.