Anger and protests against COVID restrictions
AMN
China’s daily new COVID cases set record for fourth straight day amid fast spreading protests against government’s strict Covid measures in many cities, with some people publicly venting their anger against the government. National Health Commission announced nearly 40,000 new infections on Sunday. China has dogmatically stuck with President Xi’s signature zero-COVID policy even as much of the world has moved on with pragmatic ways to handle it.
According to media reports and videos floating on social media, thousands of demonstrators protested on the streets of Shanghai on Saturday, demanding easing of COVID curbs in Shanghai and chanted anti-government slogans. Crowds of demonstrators in Shanghai shouted and held up blank sheets of papers early on Sunday evening as well as a symbol of protest.
Hundreds of students from Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University protested at their campus on Sunday, calling for an end to lockdowns. Some Beijing residents under lockdown also reportedly staged small protests and confronted local officials over movement restrictions. Capital Beijing remains standstill with 4,307 new local COVID-19 cases on Saturday, a record high of new infections since the pandemic began in 2020, according to the Beijing Municipal Health Commission.
Students have also demonstrated at university in the eastern city of Nanjing, according to online videos. Anti-COVID protests were also reported from Wuhan and Chongqing.
Even though public protests are rare in China, recently there have been consistent pushback against government’s COVID restrictions which has even resulted in deaths due to delay in medical care. Few days ago, Guangzhou residents smashed down barriers to restrict public movement. Frustration over rigid Zero COVID policy is boiling after Xi secured a third term at the helm of China’s Communist Party just over a month ago and it was expected that he might loosen up the policy but for the surging cases.
The latest wave of protests resulted from the widespread anger following the death of 10 people on Thursday in a building fire in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang region in a deadly fire, apparently as strict lockdown rules stopped them from escaping. Hundreds of people protested on the streets in Urumqi on Friday calling for an end to lockdowns. Chinese authorities denied that Covid restrictions caused the deaths, but officials in Urumqi did issue an unusual apology late on Friday. Xinjiang officials said Sunday that public transport services would gradually resume from Monday in Urumqi. In Xinjiang, with majority of Muslim Uighur minority, many residents in Urumqi have been locked down since August. Most have not been allowed to leave their homes, and some have reported dire conditions, including shortage of food.
In the central city of Zhengzhou this week, workers at the world’s biggest iPhone factory clashed with hazmat-suited security officers over a delay in bonus payments, change in work contracts and chaotic Covid rules.
Amid rapidly changing orders from top and under the threat of penalties for flareup of cases, local authorities often go overboard in implementing the COVID protocols and ignore the 20 points of the “optimized ZERO-COVID policy” rolled out on Nov 11.
Meanwhile, China’s state council on Sunday sought to blame the local authorities for improper implementation of the 20 new adjusted measures, according to a state media report. “The mechanism said that some local governments have been found to either roll out overt measures such as ordering widespread lockdowns or take a lax attitude toward the disease, and both tendencies are wrong,” the report said. Wang Liping, a researcher at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said that these new measures have not only required local officials to cope with local outbreaks in a more scientific manner, but also guided them to be “more considerate in enforcement”.
Rising cases are making it difficult for China to come out of this quagmire as officials and leaders have always defended Zero-COVID as a better model to protect lives of people as compared to other parts of the world. Experts say, in last three years, instead of preparing for an eventual reopening by ramping up medical infrastructure specially, more ICU beds and emphasizing the need for vaccinations, it has poured enormous resources into mass testing, lockdown and quarantine facilities. Officials have repeatedly said that any loosening of zero COVID will overwhelm the medical infrastructure and defended ZERO-COVID policy.