With China’s zero-Covid strategy set to enter its fourth year next spring, displays of defiance pose a challenge to President Xi Jinping’s “people-centred” narrative.
„:“An anonymous article that asked 10 questions of the National Health Commission about China’s response to Covid-19 created a stir on Chinese social media late on Tuesday. Days later, residents in various parts of China took to the streets against the stringent zero-Covid measures such as prolonged lockdowns and the sealing of homes. On Friday night, people in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, demonstrated in front of government buildings a day after a fire in a block of flats killed 10 residents . Even though the authorities said the building was in a low-risk area, many questioned whether the casualties were due to Covid-19 restrictions. Videos posted on social media platforms showed people marching in the streets, singing the national anthem, waving the national flag and shouting “lift the lockdown!” The city has been under lockdown for more than 100 days. Urumqi authorities said on Saturday the city would lift coronavirus restrictions “in phases” after the protest footage surfaced online. In downtown Shanghai, mourning over the Urumqi deaths on Saturday night later turned into a protest against the strict Covid-19 controls, with demonstrators shouting slogans such as “no PCR tests, no health code”. The social media article had earlier raised questions that had been on people’s minds for the past three years, including whether the health commission’s main job was just to tally Covid-19 cases, if any such virus had ever been eradicated and why people who had three shots of vaccine were still getting infected. The article, which also questioned the opaque release of data and whether there was any scientific basis for China’s zero-Covid policy, was read more than 100,000 times in a few hours, before censors wiped it from the internet. Meanwhile, videos posted online earlier also showed sporadic protests against epidemic-control measures across China. In Zhengzhou, Henan province, thousands of workers at the world’s biggest iPhone factory hurled sticks and bricks at riot police, smashing testing kiosks as others cheered them on. And in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, protesters tore down barriers to confront health workers and marched on the streets.
