Beijing, Chengdu and Wuhan see advantages as anger grows over Xi Jinping’s strict policies against covid-19, in one for the Communist Party
Hundreds of professionals and police clashed in Shanghai as professionals opposing China’s strict covid restrictions erupted for a third day and spread to several cities, the largest for President Xi Jinping since winning a historic third term in power.
The wave of civil disobedience is unprecedented in mainland China over the past decade, as frustration mounts over Xi’s Zero Covid policy, nearly three years after the pandemic.
Protests sparked by a fatal shooting at an apartment in the west of the country last week took hold on Sunday in cities including Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Wuhan and Guangzhou.
On Monday, China reported a new record for new Covid-19 infections, with 40,347 cases. The cities of Guangzhou and Chongqing, with thousands of cases, are suffering from the outbreaks. Hundreds of infections have also been reported in several other cities across the country. The country.
Chinese stocks fell sharply as investors worried about the effect of the protests on the world’s second-largest economy.
In the early hours of Monday in Beijing, two teams of protesters numbering at least 1,000 more people piled up along the Chinese capital’s third ring road near the Liangma River, refusing to disperse.
In Shanghai on Sunday, police maintained a strong presence on Wulumuqi Street, named after Urumqi, where a candlelight vigil was held the day before the protests.
“We just need our fundamental human rights. We can’t leave our homes without getting tested. It was Xinjiang’s turn of fate that took other people too far,” said a 26-year-old protester in Shanghai who declined to be identified. .
“People here are not violent, but the police arrest them for no reason. They tried to catch me, but the other people around me pulled my arms so hard that they pushed me back so I could escape. “
On Sunday night, many other people piled up in the area. Some pushed police who sought to disperse them. People held up blank sheets of paper in protest.
On Saturday, Shanghai citizens chanted “No PCR testing, we have freedom!” followed by repeated rounds of “Freedom!Freedom!”
Protests erupted on Friday in Urumqi, the regional capital of Xinjiang’s far west, after footage of a fireplace in a residential building that killed at least 10 other people the previous day raised accusations that the Covid lockdown had something to do with the death toll.
Urumqi officials held a press conference in the early hours of Saturday to deny that covid measures had hindered escape and rescue. Many of Urumqi’s four million citizens have been subjected to some of the country’s longest lockdowns, unable to leave their homes for a hundred days.
On Sunday night, a BBC journalist noticed on camera that police were “beating and kicking” him before he was arrested in Shanghai. Footage on social media showed Edward Lawrence dragged to the ground handcuffed, while in another video he noted that he said: “Call the consulate now. “. “
A BBC spokesperson said: “The BBC is incredibly involved in the remedy of our journalist Ed Lawrence, who was arrested and handcuffed while covering the protests in Shanghai.
“He was detained for several hours before being released,” the spokesman said, adding that he was covering the protests as an accredited journalist.
Lawrence, a senior journalist and camera operator at the BBC’s China office, tweeted from the protest site in Shanghai on Sunday morning UK time.
In the central city of Wuhan, where the pandemic began 3 years ago, videos on social media showed many citizens taking to the streets, breaking steel barricades, tearing down Covid testing tents, and a difficult end to lockdowns.
Other cities that have noticed public dissent are Lanzhou in the northwest, where citizens on Saturday tore down Covid tents and destroyed cash registers, social media posts show.
Widespread public protests are rare in China, where Xi has virtually eliminated space for dissent, forcing citizens to vent their frustration primarily on social media, where they play cat-and-mouse with censors.
China has remained true to Xi’s zero-covid policy, even as much of the world has lifted maximum restrictions. Although low by global standards, the number of cases in China reached record levels for days, with only about 40,000 new infections on Saturday, causing even more lockdowns in the country’s cities. Beijing has defended the policy as a savings and mandatory to overwhelm the fitness system.
Frustration is boiling over a month after Xi won a third term at the helm of the Chinese Communist Party, and much of the anger is directed at the Chinese leader.
In a video on social media, a protester accused Xi of locking other people up and confining them to their homes.
“Xi Jinping resigns, Communist Party resigns,” he said in the shared message.
“This will put a lot of pressure on the response. Most likely, one reaction will be repression, and they will arrest and prosecute some protesters,” said Dan Mattingly, an assistant professor of political science at Yale University.
Still, he said, the riots are a cry of what we saw in 1989, when protests culminated in the bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square.
He added that as long as Xi had China’s elite and military on his side, he would run any significant threat to his grip on power.
Reuters contributed to this report