China eases some COVID-19 curbs after demonstrations
Xinjiang region opens up some neighbourhoods in the capital of Urumqi ater residents held extraordinary protests against the city’s ‘ZERO-COVID’ policy
Authorities in China’s western Xinjiang region opened up some neighbourhoods in the capital of Urumqi on Saturday ater residents held extraordinary late-night demonstrations against the city’s “ZERO-COVID” lockdown that had lasted more than three months.
The displays of public defiance were fanned by anger over a fire in an apartment compound that had killed 10, according to the official death toll, as emergency workers took three hours to extinguish the blaze — a delay many atributed to obstacles caused by anti-virus measures.
The demonstrations, as well as public anger online, are the latest signs of building frustration with China’s intense approach to controlling COVID-19. It’s the only major country in the world that still is fighting the pandemic through mass testing and lockdowns.
During Xinjiang’s lockdown, some residents elsewhere in the city have had their doors chained physically shut, including one who spoke to reporters who declined to be named for fear of retribution. Many in Urumqi believe such tactics may have prevented residents from escaping in Friday’s fire and that the official death toll was an undercount.
Officials denied the accusations, saying there were no barricades in the building and that residents were permited to leave. Anger boiled over ater Urumqi city officials held a press conference about the fire in which they appeared to shit responsibility for the deaths onto the apartment tower’s residents.
“Some residents’ ability to rescue themselves was too weak,” said Li Wensheng, head of Urumqi’s fire department.
People in Urumqi largely marched peacefully in big puffy winter jackets in the cold winter night.
Videos of protests featured people holding the Chinese flag and shouting “Open up, open up.” They spread rapidly on Chinese social media despite heavy censorship. In some scenes, people shouted and pushed against rows of men in the white whole-body hazmat suits that local government workers and pandemic-prevention volunteers wear, according to the videos.
By Saturday, most had been deleted by censors. The Associated Press could not independently verify all the videos, but two Urumqi residents who declined to be named out of fear of retribution said large-scale protests occurred Friday night. One of them said he had friends who participated.
The AP pinpointed the locations of two of the videos of the protests in different parts of Urumqi. In one video, police in face masks and hospital gowns faced off against shouting protesters. In another, one protester is speaking to a crowd about their demands. It is unclear how widespread the protests were.
In one video, which the AP could not independently verify, Urumqi’s top official, Yang Fasen, told angry protesters he would open up low-risk areas of the city the following morning.
That promise was realised the next day, as Urumqi authorities announced that residents of low risk areas would be allowed to move freely within their neighborhoods. Still, many other neighbourhoods remain under lockdown.
Officials also triumphantly declared Saturday that they had basically achieved “societal ZERO-COVID,” meaning that there was no more community spread and that new infections were being detected only in people already under health monitoring, such as those in a centralised quarantine facility.
Social media users greeted the news with disbelief and sarcasm. “Only China can achieve this speed,” wrote one user on Weibo.
On Chinese social media, where trending topics are manipulated by censors, the “ZEROCOVID” announcement was number one trending hashtag on both Weibo, a Twiter-like plaform, and Douyin, the Chinese edition of Tiktok. The apartment fire and protests became a lightning rod for public anger, as millions shared posts questioning China’s pandemic controls or mocking the country’s stiff propaganda and harsh censorship controls.
The explosion of criticism marks a sharp turn in public opinion. Early on in the pandemic, China’s approach to controlling COVID-19 was hailed by its own citizens as minimising deaths at a time when other countries were suffering devastating waves of infections.