“Down With Xi”: China’s protests against Covid curbs after 10 fire deaths

Shanghai:

Protests simmered in Shanghai early Sunday, as residents of several Chinese cities, many of them angered by a deadly fire in the country’s far west, retreated against severe COVID-19 curbs nearly three years into the pandemic.

A fire on Thursday that killed 10 people at a high-rise building in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region, has sparked widespread public anger as many internet users suspected residents could not escape in time because the building was partially sealed. officials denied.

上海乌鲁木齐路 民众高喊
共产党 下台！
这是迄今为止最为激进的口号。 pic.twitter.com/ijP7lxnIgH

— 李老师不是你老师 (@whyyoutouzhele) November 26, 2022

In Shanghai, China’s most populous city and financial center, residents gathered Saturday night on the city’s Wulumuqi Road — which takes its name from Urumqi — for a vigil that culminated in a protest in the early hours of Sunday.

“Pick up the lockdown for Urumqi, lift the lockdown for Xinjiang, lift the lockdown for all of China!” shouted the crowd in Shanghai, according to a video circulated on social media.

At one point, a large crowd began to shout, “Down with the Chinese Communist Party, down with Xi Jinping, liberate Urumqi!”, according to witnesses and videos, in a rare public protest against the Chinese leadership.

A large group of police officers watched and at times tried to break up the crowd.

China is battling a wave of infections that has led to lockdowns and other restrictions in cities across the country as Beijing sticks to a zero-COVID policy even as much of the world tries to coexist with the coronavirus.

China defends President Xi Jinping’s signature zero-COVID policy as lifesaving and necessary to avoid overwhelming its healthcare system. Officials have vowed to push through with it, despite growing public pushback and the mounting toll from the world’s second-largest economy.

Videos from Shanghai widely shared on Chinese social media showed crowds facing dozens of police officers chanting chants including: “Serve the people”, “We don’t want health codes” and “We want freedom”.

Some social media users posted screenshots of street signs for Wulumuqi Road, both to evade censorship and to show support for protesters in Shanghai. Others shared comments or posts urging all “you brave young people” to be careful. Many contain advice on what to do if the police come or start arresting people during a protest or vigil.

NATIONAL RAGE

Shanghai’s 25 million residents were locked down for two months earlier this year, an ordeal that sparked anger and protest.

Chinese authorities have since tried to be more focused in their COVID sidewalks, but that effort has been tested by a flurry of infections as China heads into its first winter with the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

While the number of cases is low by global standards, the number of cases in China has been at record highs for days, with nearly 40,000 new infections reported by health authorities on Sunday for the previous day.

On Friday night, crowds took to the streets of Urumqi chanting “End the lockdown!” and pumping their fists in the air after the deadly fire, according to videos circulating on Chinese social media.

Many of Urumqi’s 4 million residents have endured one of the country’s longest lockdowns, not allowed to leave their homes for up to 100 days.

In Beijing, 2,700km (1,700 miles) away, some residents who were locked down staged small protests on Saturday or confronted local officials over movement restrictions, with some successfully pressuring them to lift curbs ahead of schedule.

A video shared with Reuters showed Beijing residents in an unidentifiable part of the capital marching around an open-air parking lot on Saturday shouting, “End the lockdown!”

The Beijing government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.

The coming weeks could be the worst in China since the early weeks of the pandemic, for both the economy and the health care system, Capital Economics’ Mark Williams said in a note last week, as efforts to contain the outbreak continue in many ways. countries require additional local lockdowns. towns.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is being published from a syndicated feed.)