Hundreds of protesters in Shanghai clashed with police last night as protests over China's strict Covid restrictions entered a third day after a deadly fire at an apartment building in the country's far west.
This kind of civil disobedience, which has spread to other cities including Beijing, has not been seen in mainland China since President Xi Jinping took power ten years ago and it is happening at a time of growing dissatisfaction due to the policy of zero tolerance towards covid.
China has been implementing some of the strictest anti-covid measures in the world for three years, which, among other things, are taking a heavy toll on the world's second-largest economy.
"I'm here because I love my country, but I don't like the government... I want to go out freely, but I can't. Our covid policy is a game and not based on science or reality," one protester in Shanghai, who identified himself as Shaun Xiao.
Victoria Lee has experienced several lockdowns since covid emerged in China nearly three years ago. Being imprisoned in her own home in Beijing made her depressed, powerless and angry.
Longing for a normal life
"Closed in my home with the door sealed, I had no motivation to do anything," the Chinese woman, whose real name was not published by the British list, told the Guardian. "I didn't want to work, I didn't want to study. Sometimes I would curl up in bed and cry," said this lawyer in her thirties.
Even when she was not imprisoned, she told the British newspaper that the draconian restrictions had altered her normal life.
After one of her colleagues tested positive for covid-19, Li was considered a close contact and lost her green health pass for a month, which means she is banned from public places.
"I could not enter stores and other shops. I couldn't go to work," she said. "It affected my work - the work was going badly, and the boss became nervous". Striving for a normal life, Lijeva recently applied for an emigrant visa in Canada.
As Beijing's iron-fisted zero-tolerance policy on Covid enters its third year, Victoria Li is just one of millions of people in the country who have lost patience. As the number of infected people on a daily basis reaches records, many have begun to question the high price they are paying for a goal that is impossible to achieve.
Last Wednesday, the National Health Commission reported 31 cases of local transmission, the highest daily number since the coronavirus was first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 444.
Although the number of cases in China is small compared to global figures, the authorities insist on a "war of extermination" against the virus. When China reported its first Covid-XNUMX deaths in half a year last Sunday, new quarantines were imposed across the country.
The rare outbursts of public anger in the past two weeks are the most visible signs of deep-seated frustration and skepticism over the endless restrictions and lockdowns, the mass testing the Chinese people have been subjected to.
"We just want our basic human rights. We can't leave the house without getting tested. The tragedy in Xiangjiang was the final straw," a 26-year-old protester in Shanghai, who did not want to be identified, told Reuters.
"These people are not violent, but the police arrest them without any reason. They tried to take me away, but people grabbed my hands and dragged me so hard that I managed to escape," he told the British agency.
In footage posted on social media on Saturday, citizens in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang region, angrily confronted officials after a building fire killed 10 people.
Thousands of workers at an Apple iPhone factory in central China clashed with riot police last Sunday and tore down barricades. Last week, migrant workers in the southern Chinese province of Gunazhou broke through quarantine barriers and took to the streets.
Awkward questions
Also, last week, there was an outpouring of sadness on social networks due to the death of a four-month-old baby whose father said that her medical treatment was delayed for 12 hours due to covid restrictions. The death of a three-year-old boy in northwestern China from carbon monoxide poisoning after his father was prevented from taking him to hospital due to Covid restrictions also sparked outrage, the "Guardian" recalls.
A 32-year-old mother of two committed suicide in a quarantine center in Guangzhou earlier this month after a text showed she tested positive for Covid and was separated from her husband. The news of the event, which was published by the respected financial media Kaisin, was quickly pulled from social networks.
Public skepticism towards the effectiveness of the zero-tolerance approach is increasingly evident. The outcry, as well as the narrative that deviates from the official one, is quickly removed from the Internet.
One such example is a social media post asking ten tough questions about the way the authorities are handling the pandemic. “Historically, has any flu virus ever been eradicated? If not, how can the coronavirus be eradicated? What price should we pay? What is the purpose of multiple PCR testing?” the post stated.
In another post, there are responses that suggest that you should keep your mouth shut: "You shouldn't ask that," "You shouldn't know that," and "Those are dangerous thoughts."
On November 11, the Chinese government announced that it would shorten the quarantine and relax some restrictions. Local officials were told to refrain from over-insistent measures against the spread of the virus, but also said that China's "war" against the pandemic remains.
Shijiazhuang, a city of 11 million people about 180 miles from Beijing, has been chosen as a pilot project for easing covid restrictions, according to the Guardian. The city was opened, but only nine days later it was closed again, the number of new cases on a daily basis broke all records.
Observers argue that regardless of what the central government says, the Covid restrictions will not be relaxed in reality, as China's top-down power structure means that local officials will not hesitate to implement strict measures to avoid being blamed for the increase in the number of infected.
Given that the restrictions are unlikely to be lifted anytime soon, analysts expect the protests to escalate, but also point out that instances of sporadic unrest are unlikely to pose a threat to Beijing, which has the power to quickly quell them.
"Protests remained sporadic and unorganized... if it acts like an avalanche, then it is more because people are affected everywhere, throughout the country," said the professor. Victoria Tin-bor Hui, a political scientist from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. "However, the covid measures have also drastically increased the party's surveillance capacity. Tensions will escalate, but we cannot predict when the explosion will happen”:
The protests are unlikely to threaten the government
Teacher Chung Kim-wah a sociologist who once worked at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, told the British newspaper that the protests show that "people have lost patience with the unreasonable covid measures and are questioning their effectiveness", but added that unorganized protests are not a strong enough force to oppose the government. He pointed out that if even the smallest changes are made, the protesters will withdraw. "As a result, extensive changes from the bottom to the top are very difficult, if not impossible," he said.
Teacher Dan Mattingly, who teaches political science at Yale University, said, however, that the party is under strong pressure to respond. "There is a good chance that one response will be repression, they will arrest and prosecute the protesters."
However, he also pointed out in an interview with Reuters that the riots are far from those recorded in 1989, when the demonstrations culminated in a bloody suffocation on Tiananmen Square.
He added that as long as Xi has the Chinese elite and the military on his side, he will not face a serious risk of losing power.
During the weekend Ma Singrui, the secretary of the Communist Party in Xinjiang, where ten people died in the fire, called for increased measures in the region to curb the "illegal and violent rejection of covid prevention measures".
Bonus video:
