1D54D74C4B788B01A39CE8E6899019C7 Rare street protests across China: Is Xi Jinping's zero-Covid policy turning people against their government? -->
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Rare street protests across China: Is Xi Jinping's zero-Covid policy turning people against their government?

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A single voice stating anger publicly started a fire

Originally published on Global Voices

Screen shot from The Guardian YouTube channel showing demonstrations in Shanghai on Ürümqi street.

China is witnessing rare street protests and demonstrations now uniting workers, ethnic minorities, students and urban residents all calling for an end to the ‘zero-Covid’ policy that has turned the entire country into a prison. Such unrest is unprecedented in recent Chinese history, and bears similarities with the 1989 demonstrations that were crushed on June 4th on Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

Following a fire on November 25 in a high-rise in Ürümqi, the capital of Xinjiang in western China, that saw the death of several victims, possibly due to drastic lockdown of buildings and streets across China as a result of Xi Jinping's ‘Zero-Covid” policy, residents of the city – both Uyghurs and Han Chinese, took to the streets to demand less crippling sanitary measures.

The ‘Zero-COVID’ policy aims a preventing any community spread and is heavily enforced in China. This means social but also economic life is often paralyzed, travel severely restricted. The policy has lead to starvation, as people are unable to shop for basic food, and increasing frustration for hundreds of millions of people.

The fact that demonstrations took place in Ürümqi is alarming for Beijing that continues a policy of genocide towards the Uyghur population in the region. The city witnessed ethnic clashes in 2009 that left nearly 200 people dead.

Spreading like wildfire

What is particularly unusual, and certainly extremely worrisome for Chinese authorities is that, despite severe censorship of social media and traditional media, news about the victims and the protests in Ürümqi, have circulated rapidly across the country, causing people in other cities to react and engage in similar behaviour.

Clearly, the tension between the people and the government has been simmering for quite some time. On October 13, days before the Chinese Communist Party Congress that confirmed Xi Jinping's mandate at the head of the country, a protestor put banner on a central bridge in Beijing demanding the end of ‘zero-COVID’ measures. Such public manifestations of discontent are extremely rare and usually removed within minutes given China ultra sophisticated system of surveillance and face recognition, particularly in large cities.

Later, on November 23, workers from a factory producing Apple iPhones in Henan province, Foxconn, protested against the same sanitary measures, and clashed with security forces.

And then something really unexpected happened: starting from November 26, students and urban residents across the country decided to honour the dead of Ürümqi by staging their own public remembrance. Those actions very rapidly turned into campus dissent and street demonstrations in cities such as Chengdu, Shanghai, Beijing.

Global Voices spoke to Vivian Wu, a native from Beijing who is currently based in New York and who is actively covering the unrest from her Twitter account. Wu is a seasoned journalist and media entrepreneur who served as BBC Hong Kong Head and as journalist and editor in n the South China Morning Post and Initium Media.

As she explains, the sense of solidarity comes from the realization that everyone's life is now at risk, because of the ‘Zero-COVID’ policy:

The tragedy in Ürümqi – when you are blocked or prevented from running out and die as a result – could happen to anyone in China. That is why people are outraged across the country. Everyone is locked up in all the major cities, at a time when the world is opening up, people are going back to normal life. Whereas in China there is a tightening of those policies. Xi Jinping enforces the ‘zero-COVID policy to show he is a winner in the pandemic. People were hoping that measures would be loosening up but local governments want to show their loyalty to Xi Jinping, so very often, they actually scale up the policy.

This comes on top of years of accumulated frustration, as Wu details:

A significant amount of people is now aware that this policy is inhumane, and economically harmful: so many businesses, restaurants, schools have shut down. People suffer financially – an unprecedented situation after 30 years of economic reforms and rapid GDP growth. People also saw that during the World Cup no one is wearing a mask, while in China people are sometimes locked down for 100 days.

But perhaps what inspired many is that happened on October 13 on that bridge in Beijing, she argues:

The Sitong Bridge incident set a fire: the man behind it, Peng Zaizhou also issued a statement to ask Xi Jinping to step down. His requests are now being chanted right now all over the streets of China's largest cities. Peng became a model – a single voice stating anger publicly. This is unprecedented in a country with no freedom of speech, no right to demonstrate even in small groups. People are desperate and feel they have nothing to lose after nearly three years of drastic policies. Students have also used very smart means to express their rejection of the ‘Zero-COVID’ policies, the lack of freedom on campuses, as can be seens from images now circulating on social media.

Shocking images of protest in a heavily-policed state 

Wu is covering the demonstrations live as photos, videos and comments surface in China and are rapidly copied before they get erased on censored social media. Some people also send videos to friends abroad and ask them to post them outside of the Chinese internet.

Here, she shares scenes from Sichuan's capital Chengdu that, for anyone familiar with China, are a very rare occurrence: people marching and protesting while no police can be seen trying to stop or detain people:

This scene shows a peaceful protest, explaining the idea is to remember the Ürümqi victims, while the main speaker is clearly not afraid of the police – again something very unusual in today's China:

 A similar scene in central Beijing, where seeing people holding simple protest signs is simply difficult to imagine in any other circumstances, given the presence of embassies in that area and the desire of the Chinese government to always show its society as ‘harmonious; and free from any social trouble:

In this video, the question of the future for young Chinese people is out directly to the police:

And here in Shanghai, where people gather on Ürümqi street to commemorate the victims, the police removes the street sign in an effort to manage the unprecedented demonstrations in a city known for its usual political

More videos can also be seen at the China Protest 2022 Twitter account.

The question everyone is asking now is how will the Chinese government react to such widespread demonstrations that cross social, ethnic and geographic boundaries.

Written by Filip Noubel



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