China roiled by lockdown protests
Rare demonstrations include calls against nation’s leader, party
TAIPEI, Taiwan — Protests against China’s restrictive COVID-19 measures appeared to roil in a number of cities Saturday night, in displays of public defiance fanned by anger over a deadly fire in the western Xinjiang region.
Many protests could not be immediately confirmed, but in Shanghai, police used pepper spray to stop around 300 protesters who had gathered at Middle Urumqi Road at midnight, bringing flowers, candles and signs reading “Urumqi, November 24, those who died rest in peace” to memorialize the 10 deaths caused by a fire in an apartment building in Xinjiang’s capital city Urumqi.
A protester who gave only his family name, Zhao, said one of his friends was beaten by police and two friends were pepper-sprayed.
Zhao said protesters yelled slogans including “Xi Jinping, step down, Communist Party, step down,” “Unlock Xinjiang, unlock China,” “do not want PCR (tests), want freedom” and “press freedom.”
Around 100 police stood by, preventing some protesters from gathering or leaving, and buses carrying more police arrived later, Zhao said.
Another protester, who gave only his family name of Xu, said there was a larger crowd of thousands of demonstrators, but that police stood in the road and let protesters pass on the sidewalk.
Posts about the protest were deleted immediately on China’s social media, as China’s Communist Party commonly does to suppress criticism.
Earlier Saturday, authorities in the Xinjiang region opened up some neighborhoods in Urumqi after residents held extraordinary late-night demonstrations against the city’s draconian “zero-COVID” lockdown that had lasted more than three months. Many alleged that obstacles caused by anti-virus measures made the fire worse. It took emergency workers three hours to extinguish the blaze, but officials denied the allegations.
During Xinjiang’s lockdown, some residents elsewhere in the city have had their doors chained shut. Many in Urumqi believe such tactics may have prevented residents from escaping in Thursday’s fire and that the official death toll was an undercount.
Anger boiled over after Urumqi city officials held a press conference about the fire in which they appeared to shift responsibility for the deaths onto the apartment tower’s residents.
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.
Given China’s vast security apparatus, protests are risky anywhere in the country, but they are extraordinary in Xinjiang, which for years has been the target of a brutal security crackdown. A huge number of Uyghurs and other largely Muslim minorities have been swept into a vast network of camps and prisons, instilling fear that grips the region.
Most of the protesters visible in the videos were Han Chinese. A Uyghur woman living in Urumqi said it was because Uyghurs were too scared to take to the streets despite their rage.
In one video, which the AP could not independently verify, Urumqi’s top official told angry protesters he would open up low-risk areas of the city the following morning.
That promise was realized 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 neighborhoods 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 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, 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 in the pandemic, China’s approach to COVID-19 was hailed by its own citizens as minimizing deaths while other countries were suffering devastating waves of infections. China’s leader Xi Jinping had held up the approach as an example of the superiority of the Chinese system in comparison to the West.
But support for “zeroCOVID” has cratered in recent months, as tragedies sparked public anger. Last week, the Zhengzhou city government in the central province of Henan apologized for the death of a 4-month old baby that died after a delay in receiving medical attention while suffering vomiting and diarrhea in quarantine.
The government has doubled down its policy even as it loosens some measures, such as shortening quarantine times. The central government has repeatedly said it will stick to “zero COVID.”