- Writing
- BBC News World
image source, EPA
Hundreds of protesters protest in Beijing with blank sheets.
Fed up with China’s zero covid policy has caused an unprecedented outbreak of protests in recent times in the country.
The demonstrations that have spread through different cities in China have led to criticism of President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party, in a wave of discontent that is very unusual in a country where censorship and police repression rarely show signs of dissent. .
How did the protests start?
The anger of many Chinese citizens is not new, although it has been in recent weeks when this discontent has begun to crystallize and spread through the main cities of the country.
Last week, a series of violent protests broke out in the world’s largest iPhone factorys, in the city of Zhengzhou. The images that were broadcast live on social networks showed how the police and personnel dressed in protective overalls violently repressed the demonstrations.
The factory had been confined in October due to the increase in covid cases, which caused some workers to escape from the facilities. The company, Foxconn, then hired new workers, promising them better conditions.
But they later denounced that these conditions had not been met and that, added to the weariness of the strict anti-covid measures, fueled the outbreak, which had a significant impact throughout the country.
With tempers heated, the death last Thursday, November 24, of 10 people in the apartment building fire in Urumqithe capital of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, was the straw that broke the camel’s back for many Chinese.
Xinjiang has been under strict containment measures since August and, although the authorities assured that the residents of the burned building were free to leave their homes, many believe that the measures imposed against the covid contributed to the tragedy.
The fire has served as a trigger for the protests that this weekend have spread to cities such as Beijing or Shanghai.
But anger has been accumulating for months with many cases of deaths due to confinement that, despite the strict censorship carried out by the Chinese authorities, have circulated widely on the country’s social networks.
Earlier this month, a Zhengzhou family claimed their baby died because the ambulance that was supposed to take him to the hospital was delayed due to covid restrictions. Another 14-year-old girl who was confined died in October because she was unable to leave her home for medical treatment.
In September, when a 6.6-magnitude earthquake struck the Chengdu region, residents were prohibited from leaving their homes. 65 people died.
That same month, in Guizhou, a bus carrying residents to a quarantine center crashed, killing 27 people.
Added to these incidents is the outrage of many citizens at seeing how China still seems stuck in 2020, while many of the restrictions imposed during the pandemic have been lifted in the vast majority of countries around the world.
This has become more evident with the broadcast of the soccer World Cup matchesin which large crowds can be seen in the stands or around stadiums in Qatar without masks or other protection measures against covid.
image source, EPA
Covid tests have become a constant in the lives of Chinese citizens.
There is currently no widespread lockdown in China and some of the tougher measures have been relaxed. Still, the central government has asked local authorities to impose strict lockdowns in places where Covid outbreaks have been detected, even if only a few cases have been found.
In these cases, massive tests are carried out on the entire population. Those who test positive are placed in confinement at home or in guarded state facilities. All schools and businesses, except for food stores, are closed.
The measures have not prevented the largest wave of cases since the pandemic began.
What is happening now
Although over the years there have been occasional protests for different reasons, from land disputes to specific cases of police abuse, what is happening these days in China, where some protesters have dared to openly criticize the president’s leadership Chinese Xi Jinping, is unprecedented.
The suffering of the population due to the strict anti-covid measures, for which there is, for the moment, no clear horizon as to when they could end, has become an experience that has united many citizens and has contributed to the demonstrations becoming spread to the four corners of the country.
The protests pose an “unprecedented challenge for Chinese President Xi Jinping,” says BBC Asia correspondent Tessa Wong, so there is a great expectation about how will you respond to the demonstrations.
In a country where the criticism of the president or the Communist Party can be paid with jailCries calling for the resignation of Xi Jinping or the party that has governed the Asian country since 1949 have been heard in the streets of Shanghai.
image source, Getty Images
The fire in Urumqi, in which 10 people died, has been the last straw for the patience of many Chinese.
Thousands of people took to the streets of Shanghai over the weekend to remember the victims of the Urumqi fire and demonstrate against the restrictions.
Instead of abating, the demonstrations reached the capital on Sunday, where hundreds of people they gathered on the bank of a river, singing the national anthem and listening to speeches.
Earlier, at the prestigious Tsinghua University, dozens of people held a peaceful march and also sang the national anthem, according to some photos and videos posted on social networks.
Protests were also registered in the city of Chengdu (southwest) and in the most central cities of Xian y Wuhanwhere the covid pandemic originated almost three years ago.
Many demonstrators have decided to protest in silence by simply showing a blank page, as a symbol of everything they would like to say but that the authorities forbid them.
The large concentrations of the weekend seemed to have calmed down this Monday, although the discontent continues to boil on social networks.
What is the response of the Chinese government
For the moment, the Chinese government has not wanted to acknowledge this wave of social discontent, but the response to the demonstrations is being repressive.
Protests in Shanghai have resulted in dozens of arrested. The police have also erected large blue barricades on one of the main avenues of the megalopolis, where the protesters gathered over the weekend.
During the police intervention in Shanghai, several foreign journalists who were recording the demonstrations were beaten and held by the police for several hours, including a BBC reporter, Ed Lawrence.
Despite the repression, the police response has so far been relatively restrained.
However, some analysts warn, those who have dared to publicly criticize President Xi Jinping’s policies could face harsh punishment.
“Don’t forget that the (Chinese communist) party has the largest digital panopticon. It watches your every move through phone apps. So they know a lot about people, what they’re saying, who they’re communicating with, where they were in a specific night,” explains Isabelle Hilton, founder of the organization China Dialogue, to the BBC.
China, which has no independent press, also firmly controls the internet in the country, where Criticism of the authorities is vetoed and persecuted.
However, despite the censorship, news and images of the demonstrations have been massively shared on the country’s social networks, fueling the protest.
image source, Archyde.com
To prevent further protests, the authorities have erected barricades on some streets in Shanghai.
The censorship has even extended to the images of the World Cup. The official channel that broadcasts it, CCTV, removes the images in which the public is seen up close and replaces them with others of the bench or the players to, apparently, avoid showing how in other parts of the world they have almost completely disappeared restrictions against covid.
what can happen now
The Chinese government seems to have drastically underestimated the social discontent that has been on the rise in recent months over the zero covid policy, which is closely linked to President Xi.
“For a political organization with not many other priorities than staying in power, this is a real challenge,” said BBC China correspondent Stephen McDonell.
Beijing has already said that it does not intend to back down from its policies and, for the moment, there is no clear horizon of when they could chill out The restrictions.
While the rest of the world used lockdowns and social distancing measures to buy time while massive vaccination campaigns were carried out, China continues to rely on controls to keep covid at bay.
Although the country developed its own vaccines, these have not been as effective as those from Pfizer or Moderna, which use mRNA technology, and which China has decided not to import.
While two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine offer 90% protection against death or severe disease, Sinovac, one of the Chinese vaccines, only protects 70%.
Added to this lower protection is the fact that the vaccination campaign in China has not been as extensive as in other countries, and many elderly have not been immunized.
The prolonged lockdowns have also meant that many people have not developed a natural immunity to the virus. This causes the new coronavirus variants to spread more rapidly than at the beginning of the pandemic.
And here the paradox arises.
China has one of the world’s lowest rates of deaths from covid. The country has only officially registered some 5,200 deaths as a result of the virus.
However, “if China does not lock down as soon as the first cases of the virus appear, it risks returning to the horror of the early days of the pandemic,” said James Gallagher, BBC Health and Science correspondent.
According to estimates made last March, ending the zero covid policy could saturate hospitals and cause more than 1.5 million deaths.
The zero covid policy also has a economic impact both in China itself and in world marketswho resent when the world’s fabric is paralyzed by lockdowns.
According to Suraniana Tewari, the BBC’s economic correspondent in Asia, China was already facing an unprecedented unemployment crisis, especially among young people. Fear of lockdowns has made many families and businesses decide not to spend, which has slowed down the country’s economic growth.
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