What is going on in China?
Protests erupted in Shanghai early Sunday as residents in several Chinese cities, many enraged by a deadly fire in the country’s far west, demanded a rollback of severe Covid-19 restrictions, three years after the pandemic began.
A fire that killed 10 people on Thursday in a high-rise building in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region, sparked widespread public outrage and protests ignited in Shanghai in the early hours of Sunday morning, as many citizens speculated that residents were unable to escape.
In time because the building was partially closed, which officials denied.
The fire and authorities’ denials that Covid-19 measures impeded people’s flight and rescue operations sparked a civil disobedience wave unprecedented in mainland China since Xi Jinping came to power a decade ago.
In Shanghai, China’s most populous city and financial center, residents gathered for a vigil in the early hours of Sunday morning.
While a large group of police were watching the situation, the crowd held up white papers as a symbol of protest against censorship.
According to videos circulating on social media, this crowd later began chanting, “Lift the lock-down in Urumqi (the capital of Xinjiang), lift the lock-down in Xinjiang, and lift the lock-down all over China”.
According to witnesses and videos, at one point a large group of people began chanting, “Down with the Chinese Communist Party, down with Xi Jinping, and freedom for Urumqi,” in a rare public protest against the Chinese leadership.
The police sometimes tried to break up the gathering.
China is facing a surge in infections that has prompted lockdowns and other restrictions in cities across the country as Beijing adheres to a zero-Covid policy even as most of the world tries to live with the coronavirus.
Although the number of injuries in China is considered low according to international standards, injuries in China recorded record levels for days, with the health authorities announcing today, Sunday, that nearly 40,000 cases had been recorded the previous day.
China defends President Xi Jinping’s zero Covid policy, saying it aims to save lives and is necessary not to put pressure on the health care system.
Officials vowed to continue pursuing this policy despite mounting public opposition and mounting losses in the world’s second-largest economy.
