Nearly three years into the pandemic, protests against China’s strict COVID-19 restrictions have expanded to additional locations, including the financial center of Shanghai. A fatal fire in the country’s far west has generated a new wave of rage.
In Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region, a fire on Thursday that killed 10 people in a high-rise building provoked significant public outrage. Many internet users speculated that the building was partially shut down, which city officials disputed, and people were unable to flee in time.
上海乌鲁木齐路 民众高喊
共产党 下台！
这是迄今为止最为激进的口号。 pic.twitter.com/ijP7lxnIgH— 李老师不是你老师 (@whyyoutouzhele) November 26, 2022
The fire has sparked a wave of civil disobedience that has never before occurred in mainland China since Xi Jinping took office ten years ago, including on Friday in Urumqi.
Residents of Shanghai, the most populous city in China, gathered on Saturday night at Wulumuqi Road, which bears Urumqi’s name, for a candlelight vigil that later degenerated into a protest.
A sizable contingent of police stood by as the throng held aloft blank pieces of paper as a gesture of protest against censorship. According to a video shared on social media, they afterward yelled, “remove lockdown for Urumqi, lift lockdown for Xinjiang, lift lockdown for all of China!”
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 try to coexist 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 4 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”.
Powerful Xi
In China, where space for dissent has been all but abolished under Xi, widespread public protest is extremely uncommon. Instead, residents are forced to vent on social media, where they must play cat and mouse with censors.
Just over a month after Xi won a third term as leader of the Chinese Communist Party, frustration is at an all-time high.
“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.”
Nationwide Anger
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 a 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.
‘We Don’t Want Health Codes’
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.
Beijing, located 2,700 kilometers (1,700 miles) away, saw some people under lockdown organize minor protests or confront local authorities about movement restrictions on Saturday. Some of these residents were successful in pressing the authorities to remove the constraints earlier than expected.
Residents of Beijing were seen demonstrating in an unidentified area of the capital on Saturday while yelling, “End the lockdown!”
An inquiry for comment was not immediately answered by the Beijing authorities.
