Chinese break out of quarantine
Security body wants crackdown against ‘hostile’ forces
Chinese citizens clashed with officials enforcing the country’s draconian Covid restrictions yesterday as they tried to break free from quarantined apartment blocks.
Video from the eastern city of Jinan showed residents tussling with dozens of health workers in hazmat suits and pushing against a makeshift barrier made from metal shelving that was blocking access to their building.
Chants ordering authorities to “lift the lockdown” could be heard as the crowds surged against the railing.
China’s top security body called for a “crackdown” against “hostile forces” as people across the country, emboldened by the weekend’s protests, mounted a fresh challenge to the government’s uncompromising zero-covid strategy.
In Taiyuan, the capital of the northern Shanxi province, residents of a locked-down apartment complex pleaded with the authorities to let them out.
Clashes over lockdown measures also erupted in the southern megacities of Shenzhen and Guangzhou.
Posts on China’s Weibo social network later suggested the Jinan residents reached an agreement with their compound managers to lift Covid restrictions, as local authorities began to make small concessions in an effort to quell the unrest.
The stark warning from the Communist Party’s Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, which oversees all domestic law enforcement in China, came after security services were out in force across the country to tackle widespread demonstrations not seen in decades, as anger over unrelenting lockdowns added to deep-rooted frustration with the political system.
A deadly fire last week in Urumqi, the capital of the north-western region of Xinjiang, was the catalyst for the outrage, with thousands of protesters taking to the streets in cities around China.
The Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission said it was “necessary to crack down on infiltration and sabotage activities by hostile forces in accordance with the law”, according to state news agency Xinhua.
It also said it was crucial to “resolutely crack down on illegal criminal acts that disrupt social order in accordance with the law, and earnestly safeguard overall social stability”.
Meanwhile, police in major cities have begun to hunt down people who had participated in protests over the weekend.
Police were searching yesterday for people from an anti-covid protest in eastern Beijing, one protester said.
“I’m very worried,” said the protester, who declined to give her name.
Late yesterday, she said she had received an invitation to “have tea” with local police, a euphemism used by the authorities in China to describe meetings to intimidate those they consider security threats.
Another protester told Reuters that they had been asked to show up at a police station with a written record of their activities on Sunday night.
“We are all desperately deleting our chat history,” the protester said. “There are just too many police.’’ P China is reporting record numbers of Covid infections, with major outbreaks in some of the country’s largest cities, including Beijing, Guangzhou and Chongqing.