What you should know:
On Monday, police arrested and searched others at the sites of weekend protests in Shanghai and Beijing, after crowds there and other Chinese cities protested against strict COVID-19 measures that disrupt lives three years after the pandemic.
From the streets of several Chinese cities to dozens of university campuses, protesters staged a show of civil disobedience unprecedented since leader Xi Jinping took power a decade ago. During his tenure, Xi oversaw the cancellation of dissent and the expansion of a high-tech system. Formula of social surveillance that made the protest more tricky and risky.
“What we oppose are restrictions on people’s rights in the call for virus prevention and restrictions on people’s individual freedom and livelihoods,” said Jason Sun, a Shanghai resident.
There was no sign of new protests Monday in Beijing or Shanghai, but dozens of police were in the spaces where the protests took place.
Police have asked others to check their phones to see if they have virtual personal networks (VPNs) and the Telegram app, which was used among protesters over the weekend, according to citizens and social media users. VPNs are illegal for most people in China, while the Telegram app is blocked on the web in China.
When asked about widespread anger over China’s zero-COVID policy, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters: “What they discussed does not reflect what happened.
“We who with the leadership of the Communist Party of China and the cooperation and help of the Chinese people, our fight against COVID-19 will be successful. “
The backlash to COVID-19 restrictions is a setback for China’s efforts to eliminate the virus, which is infecting record numbers after sections of the population sacrificed their income, mobility and intellectual fitness to prevent it from spreading.
The zero-COVID policy has kept the official death toll in China in the thousands, to more than a million in the United States, but has been accused of confining several million other people to long periods of time at home, causing disruption and significantly hurting the world’s largest economy.
To abandon it would be to oppose a policy advocated by Xi. It would also threaten to overwhelm hospitals and lead to widespread illness and death in a country with millions of older people and low levels of immunity to COVID-19, experts say.
The protests rattled global markets on Monday, pushing down oil and battering Chinese stocks and the yuan.
State media made no mention of the protests, urging citizens in editorials to abide by COVID-19 rules. Many analysts say China is unlikely to reopen until March or April and wants an effective vaccination crusade before then.
“The protests imminently threaten the existing political order, but they mean that the existing COVID policy mix is no longer politically viable,” Gavekal Dragonomics analysts wrote in an e-.
“The now is what the reopening will look like. The answer is: slow, slow and messy. “
On Sunday night, protesters clashed with police at Shanghai’s shopping mall, where its 25 million citizens were trapped in their homes in April and May, and security forces took away a bus full of people.
On Monday, the government blocked some streets in central Shanghai with blue steel barriers to prevent gatherings. Shops and cafes in the domain were asked to close, a member of one of them told Reuters.
China’s COVID-19 policy is a major source of uncertainty for investors. The protests surrounding him are being watched for any sign of political instability, whatever many of them have foreseen in authoritarian China, where Xi recently secured a third term as leader.
Martin Petch, vice president of Moody’s Investors Service, said the scoring firm expected the protests to “dissipate temporarily and without leading to serious political violence. “
“However, they have to be negative if they are maintained and produce a stronger reaction from the authorities. “
The catalyst for the protests was the burning of an apartment last week in the western city of Urumqi that killed 10 people. Many speculated that COVID restrictions in the city, parts of which had been closed for a hundred days, hindered rescue and escape, which city officials denied.
Crowds in Urumqi took to the streets on Friday. Over the weekend, protesters in cities like Wuhan and Lanzhou tore down COVID facilities, while academics piled up on campuses across China.
Protests were also held in at least a dozen cities around the world in solidarity.
Discussions about the protests, as well as photographs and photographs, have unleashed a cat-and-mouse game among social media users and censors.
In Beijing, large crowds of nonviolent people piled up Sunday later on a city ring road, some with blank sheets of paper as a symbol of protest.
In Shanghai on Sunday, some protesters briefly chanted anti-Xi slogans, almost unprecedented in a country where Xi has a notorious point of strength since the Mao Zedong era.
As anger over COVID-19 regulations mounts, some have expressed opposition to other people taking to the streets.
“These moves will disturb public order,” said Adam Yan, a 26-year-old resident. “It’s bigger in government. “
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