SHANGHAI/BEIJING, Nov 27 (Reuters) – Protests in China against the severe COVID-19 crackdown spread to Shanghai on Sunday, with protesters also gathering at one of Beijing’s most prestigious universities after a deadly wildfire in the far west of the country sparked widespread anger.
The wave of civil disobedience, which has included protests in Urumqi, where the fire occurred, as well as elsewhere in Beijing and other cities, has reached unprecedented levels in mainland China since Xi Jinping took power last year. a decade
In Shanghai, China’s most populous city, residents gathered on Wulumuqi Road, named after Urumqi, on Saturday night for a candlelight vigil that turned into a protest early Sunday .
As a large group of police looked on, the crowd held up blank sheets of paper, a symbol of protest against censorship. They later shouted, “Lift the blockade for Urumqi, lift the blockade for Xinjiang, lift the blockade for all of China!”, according to a video posted on social media.
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.
At times the police tried to break up the crowd.
A large crowd gathered on the campus of Tsinghua University in Beijing, according to pictures and videos posted on social media. Some people also held blank sheets of paper.
Thursday’s fire that killed 10 people in a high-rise building in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang region, saw crowds take to the streets Friday evening, chanting “End the lockdown!” and pumping their fists in the air, according to videos on social media.
Many netizens assumed that the residents were unable to escape in time because the building was partially sealed off, which city officials denied. In Urumqi, a city of 4 million people, some people have been locked up for up to 100 days.
ZERO-Covid
China has stuck with Xi’s signature zero-COVID policy even as much of the world tries to live with the coronavirus. While low by global standards, China’s cases have hit record highs for days, with nearly 40,000 new infections on Saturday.
China defends the policy as saving lives and necessary to avoid overwhelming the health system. Officials have vowed to continue with it despite growing public crackdown and its growing toll on the world’s second-largest economy.
Widespread public protest is extremely rare in China, where space for dissent has been eliminated under Xi, forcing citizens to vent mostly on social media, where they play cat-and-mouse with the censors
Frustration boils over just over a month after Xi won a third term as head of the Chinese Communist Party.
[1/3] People hold signs and light candles during a vigil held for victims of the Urumqi fire in Shanghai, China, on Nov. 26, 2022, in this image taken from a social media video. Gao Ming/via REUTERS
“This will put severe pressure on the party to respond. There is a good chance that a 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 a far cry from what was seen in 1989, when protests culminated in a bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square. He added that as long as Xi had China’s elite and military on his side, he would face no significant risk to his grip on power.
This weekend, Xinjiang Communist Party Secretary Ma Xingrui called for the region to step up security maintenance and curb “illegal violent rejection of COVID-19 prevention measures.”
Xinjiang officials have also said that public transport services will gradually resume from Monday in Urumqi.
“WE DON’T WANT HEALTH CODES”
Other cities that have seen public dissent include Lanzhou in the northwest, where residents on Saturday pulled up the tents of COVID staff and vandalized testing booths, social media posts showed. Protesters said they were blocked even though no one had tested positive.
Candlelight vigils for the Urumqi victims were held at universities in cities including Nanjing and Beijing.
Videos from Shanghai showed crowds confronting police and chanting “Serve the people,” “We want freedom” and “We don’t want health codes,” a reference to cellphone apps that must be scanned to enter in public places all over China. .
The Shanghai government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.
The city’s 25 million people were locked down for two months earlier this year, sparking anger and protests.
Since then, Chinese authorities have sought to be more targeted in their containment of COVID, an effort that has been challenged by a surge in infections as the country faces its first winter with the highly transmissible Omicron variant.
On Saturday in Beijing, some stranded residents were able to confront and successfully pressure local officials to raise the sidewalks ahead of schedule.
A video shared with Reuters showed Beijing residents marching in an unidentifiable part of the capital on Saturday, shouting “End the blockade!”
The government in Beijing did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Reporting by Martin Quin Pollard, Yew Lun Tian, Eduardo Baptista and Liz Lee in Beijing and Brenda Goh in Shanghai and the Shanghai Press Room; Written by Tony Munroe; Editing by William Mallard, Kim Coghill and Edwina Gibbs
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