Shanghai hit by Covid protests as anger spreads across China
PROTESTS against China’s heavy Covid-19 curbs spread to more cities, including the financial hub Shanghai on Sunday (Nov 27), nearly three years into the pandemic, with a fresh wave of anger sparked by a deadly fire in the country’s far west.
The fire on Thursday that killed 10 people in a high-rise building in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang region, has sparked widespread public anger. Many Internet users surmised that residents could not escape in time because the building was partially locked down, which city officials denied.
The fire has fuelled a wave of civil disobedience, including on Friday in Urumqi, unprecedented in mainland China since Xi Jinping assumed power a decade ago.
In Shanghai, China’s most populous city, hundreds of demonstrators in Shanghai shouted and jostled with police on Sunday evening as protests over China’s stringent Covid restrictions flared for a third day.
The wave of civil disobedience, which has spread to other cities including Beijing, is unprecedented in mainland China since President Xi Jinping assumed power a decade ago and comes amid mounting frustration over his signature zero-Covid policy.
Shanghai residents gathered on Saturday night at Wulumuqi Road – which is named after Urumqi – for a candlelight vigil that turned into a protest in the early hours of Sunday.
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As a large group of police looked on, the crowd held up blank sheets of paper – a protest symbol against censorship. Later on, they shouted: “Lift lockdown for Urumqi, lift lockdown for Xinjiang, lift lockdown for all of China!” a video circulated on social media showed.
At another point, a large group began shouting: “Down with the Chinese Communist Party, down with Xi Jinping”, according to witnesses and videos, in a rare public protest against the country’s leadership.
The police tried at times to break up the crowd.
China is adhering to its zero-Covid policy even while much of the world tries to co-exist with the coronavirus. While low by global standards, China’s cases have hit record highs for days, with nearly 40,000 new infections recorded on Saturday.
China defends Xi’s signature zero-Covid policy as life-saving and necessary to prevent overwhelming the healthcare system. Officials have vowed to continue with it despite the growing public pushback and its mounting toll on the world’s second-biggest economy.
On Sunday, Xinjiang officials said public transport services will gradually resume from Monday in Urumqi. Many of its four million residents have been under some of China’s longest lockdowns, barred from leaving home for as long as 100 days.
A day earlier, Xinjiang Communist Party Secretary Ma Xingrui called for the region to step up security maintenance and curb the “illegal violent rejection of Covid-prevention measures”.
Frustration is boiling just over a month after Xi secured a third term at the helm of China’s Communist Party.
“This will put serious pressure on the party to respond. There is a good chance that one response will be repression, and they will arrest and prosecute some protesters,” said Dan Mattingly, assistant professor of political science at Yale University.
Still, he said, the unrest is far from that seen in 1989, when protests culminated in the bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square.
“Popular sentiment matters,” he said. “But as long as there is no split in the elite and as long the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) and security services remain on his side, he does not face any meaningful risk to his hold on power.”
The next few weeks could be China’s worst since the early weeks of the pandemic for the economy and the healthcare system, Mark Williams of Capital Economics said in note last week.
In the northwestern city of Lanzhou, residents on Saturday upturned Covid staff tents and smashed testing booths, posts on social media showed. Protesters said they were put under lockdown even though no one had tested positive.
Candlelight vigils for the Urumqi victims took place in universities in cities including Nanjing and Beijing.
Videos from Shanghai showed crowds facing police and chanting: “Serve the people”, “We want freedom”, and “We don’t want health codes”, a reference to the mobile phone apps that must be scanned for entry into public places across China.
The Shanghai government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.
The city’s 25 million people were put under lockdown for two months earlier this year, provoking anger and protests.
Chinese authorities have since then sought to be more targeted in their Covid curbs, an effort that has been challenged by the surge in infections as the country faces its first winter with the highly transmissible Omicron variant.
On Friday night, crowds took to the streets of Urumqi, chanting: “End the lockdown!” and pumping their fists in the air after the fire, according to videos on social media.
In Beijing, 2,700 km away, some residents under lockdown staged small protests or confronted local officials on Saturday over movement restrictions, with some successfully pressuring them into lifting the curbs ahead of schedule.
A video shared with Reuters showed Beijing residents marching in an unidentifiable part of the capital on Saturday, shouting: “End the lockdown!”
The Beijing government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University on Sunday, dozens of people held a peaceful protest against Covid restrictions during which they sang the national anthem, according to images and videos posted on social media.
In one video, which Reuters was unable to verify, a Tsinghua university student called on a cheering crowd to speak out. “If we don’t dare to speak out because we are scared of being smeared, our people will be disappointed in us. As a Tsinghua university student, I will regret it for all my life.”
One student who saw the Tsinghua protest described to Reuters feeling taken aback by the protest at one China’s most elite universities, and Xi’s alma mater.
“People there were very passionate, the sight of it was impressive,” the student said, declining to be named given the sensitivity of the matter.
Protesters were advised to bring a sheet of white paper to at least one planned demonstration, according to tips being shared in chat groups seen by Reuters.
In Hong Kong in 2020, activists also raised blank sheets of white paper in protest to avoid slogans banned under the city’s new national security law, which was imposed after massive and sometimes violent protests the previous year. Demonstrators in Moscow have also used them this year to protest Russia’s war with Ukraine.
Several Internet users showed solidarity by posting blank white squares or photos of themselves holding blank sheets of paper on their WeChat timelines or on Weibo. By Sunday morning, the hashtag “white paper exercise” was blocked on Weibo, prompting users to lament the censorship. “If you fear a blank sheet of paper, you are weak inside,” one Weibo user posted.
In the central city of Wuhan, where the pandemic began three years ago, hundreds of residents took to the streets on Sunday, smashing through metal barricades, overturning Covid testing tents and demanding an end to lockdowns, according to videos on social media that could not be independently verified.
Meanwhile, China’s state broadcaster is cutting close-up shots of maskless fans at the Qatar World Cup, after early coverage sparked anger at home where street protests have erupted over harsh Covid-19 restrictions.
China is the last major economy still attempting to stamp out the domestic spread of Covid-19 with snap lockdowns, lengthy quarantines and mass testing campaigns.
During a live broadcast of Sunday’s group game between Japan and Costa Rica, state broadcaster CCTV Sports replaced close-up shots of maskless fans waving flags with images of players, officials or the football stadium, AFP observed.
CCTV Sports showed distant shots of the crowd where it was difficult to make out individual faces, and fewer crowd shots compared to the live telecast of the same game on online platforms including Douyin – China’s version of TikTok.
On Sunday, the Chinese city of Shenzhen said it will limit restaurant and other indoor venues to 50 per cent occupancy as part of its Covid prevention measures.
New arrivals to the southern city will be barred from entering venues such as theatres and gyms for the first three days, it also said in a government notice on WeChat.
During an evening briefing, local authorities also required the majority of enterprises, employees and residents to work from home from Monday to Friday.
Shanghai will require people to provide negative results of PCR tests taken within the past 48 hours before entering restaurants, bars, shopping malls, supermarkets, beauty salons and other places of business from Nov 29, said a statement on the city government’s website. The move is intended to further control the coronavirus in these places of business, the statement added. REUTERS, AFP, BLOOMBERG
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