As protests over China‘s draconian COVID-19 regulations raged for the third day and spread to numerous cities in the wake of a deadly fire in the nation’s far west, hundreds of protesters and police engaged in violent altercations in Shanghai on Sunday night.
Since President Xi Jinping took office a decade ago, there has never been a wave of civil disobedience in mainland China, but as the pandemic has been going on for nearly three years, discontent over his famous zero-COVID policy is growing. The COVID policies are also having a significant negative impact on the second-largest economy in the world.
“I’m here because I love my country, but I don’t love my government … I want to be able to go out freely, but I can’t. Our COVID-19 policy is a game and is not based on science or reality,” said a protester in the financial hub named Shaun Xiao.
“We don’t want COVID tests, we want freedom,” one of the groups chanted earlier
On Sunday, protesters also came to the streets in Wuhan and Chengdu; during the weekend, demonstrators gathered on other university campuses throughout China. At least 1,000 protesters in two separate groups were collected along Beijing’s 3rd Ring Road near the Liangma River in the wee hours of Monday and refused to disperse.
“We don’t want masks, we want freedom. We don’t want COVID tests, we want freedom,” one of the groups chanted earlier.
Ten people were murdered in a fire at a residential high-rise building on Thursday in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region. As a result of recordings of the incident being shared on social media, lockdowns were blamed for the fire, which sparked demonstrations.
In the early hours of Saturday, Urumqi officials staged an impromptu news conference to deny that COVID restrictions had delayed escape and rescue efforts. Many of Urumqi’s 4 million citizens have been subject to some of the longest lockdowns in the nation and have been unable to leave their homes for up to 100 days.
Details of the protests
On Wulumuqi Road in Shanghai, which bore Urumqi’s name and was the scene of protests the day before, police maintained a noticeable presence on Sunday.
“We just want our basic human rights. We can’t leave our homes without getting a test. It was the accident in Xinjiang that pushed people too far,” said a 26-year-old protester in Shanghai who declined to be identified given the sensitivity of the matter.
“The people here aren’t violent, but the police are arresting them for no reason. They tried to grab me but the people all around me grabbed my arms so hard and pulled me back so I could escape.”
By Sunday night, a sizable crowd had gathered there. Police trying to scatter them were jostled by some of them. People demonstrated this by holding up blank pieces of paper.
Police were seen directing individuals onto a bus, which was then driven past the crowd with a few dozen people on board, according to a witness who worked for Reuters.
The mourning for the victims of the apartment fire in Shanghai on Saturday evolved into a demonstration against COVID curbs as the audience chanted for the lifting of lockdowns.
According to eyewitnesses and videos shared on social media, a sizable group of people screamed “Down with the Chinese Communist Party, Down with Xi Jinping” in the wee hours of Sunday in a rare public protest against the government.
China’s case numbers have been at record high for days
Even while the majority of the rest of the world has eased most restrictions, China has maintained Xi’s zero-COVID policy. Despite being low by international standards, China’s case numbers have been at record high for days. On Saturday, approximately 40,000 new infections occurred, leading to yet another round of lockdowns in various locations across the nation.
Beijing has justified the measure as both life-saving and essential to keep the healthcare system from becoming overburdened. Officials have promised to keep doing it.
Chinese authorities have attempted to be more targeted in their COVID curbs since Shanghai’s 25 million residents were placed under a two-month lockdown at the beginning of this year, but this effort has been hampered by the rise in infections as the country faces its first winter with the highly contagious Omicron variant.
More details
In China, where the space for dissent has all but been abolished under Xi, widespread public protest is uncommon. Instead, the country’s inhabitants are forced to vent their fury on social media, where they engage in a game of cat and mouse with censors. Just over a month after Xi won a third term as leader of the Chinese Communist Party, frustration is at an all-time high.
“This will put serious pressure on the party to respond. There is a good chance that one response will be repression, and they will arrest and prosecute some protesters,” said Dan Mattingly, assistant professor of political science at Yale University.
He claimed that despite this, the turmoil today is nothing like that of 1989 when demonstrations in Tiananmen Square resulted in a violent crackdown. He continued by saying that Xi would not be really threatened with losing his hold on power as long as he has the military and China’s elite on his side.
This weekend, Xinjiang Communist Party Secretary Ma Xingrui called for the region to step up security maintenance and curb the “illegal violent rejection of COVID-prevention measures”.