China sends students home; police patrol to curb protests
BEIJING — Chinese universities sent students home and police fanned out in Beijing and Shanghai to prevent more protests Tuesday after crowds angered by severe anti-virus restrictions called for leader Xi Jinping to resign in the biggest show of public dissent in decades.
Authorities have eased some controls after demonstrations in at least eight mainland cities and Hong Kong but maintained they would stick to a “zeroCOVID” strategy that has confined millions of people to their homes for months at a time.
The campaign to quash the protests on multiple fronts has drawn on the party’s decadesold tool kit of repression and surveillance, which Xi has upgraded in pursuit of unshakable dominance. He has expanded police forces, promoted loyal security leaders into key positions and declared that “political security” — for him and for the party — must be the bedrock of national security.
Public security personnel and vehicles have blanketed potential protest sites. Police officers are searching some residents’ phones for prohibited apps. Officials are going to the homes of would-be protesters to warn them against illegal activities and are taking some away for questioning. Censors are scrubbing protest symbols and slogans from social media.
With police out in force, there was no word of protests Tuesday in Beijing, Shanghai or other major mainland cities that were the scene last weekend of the most widespread protests since the army crushed the 1989 studentled Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement.
In Hong Kong, about a dozen people, mostly from the mainland, protested at a university.
China’s top leadership recognizes that a blanket approach to controlling the virus is taking an increasingly large economic and social toll, but leaders are worried that widespread infections will overwhelm a rickety health care system.
Chinese officials regularly point to the country’s vulnerable population — the old and very young — as a primary reason for why the country cannot afford to ease up.
Xi most recently called the “zero-COVID” approach an “all out people’s war to stop the spread of the virus,” that has put “the people and their lives above all else.”
China did say Tuesday it would ramp up vaccination of its oldest citizens, a move experts have argued is crucial if the world’s second-largest economy is to ease COVID-19 measures and fully reopen its economy.
Authorities will bring vaccines to people in nursing homes, go door-to-door, use mobile vaccination stations and press those who are reluctant to give a reason, according to a statement from the National Health Commission. About 90% of China’s total population is fully vaccinated, but among those 80 and older, just 65.8% are fully vaccinated, and only 40% have received a booster.