Following the global pandemic that emerged in 2020, placing China at its epicentre, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, enforced the ‘zero-covid policy’.
Nearly three years after the initial detection of Covid-19 in Wuhan, China's case counts continue to be significantly lower than those in the majority of other nations. Nevertheless, this implies that the population has had minimal contact to the virus, despite even the vaccination rate being much lowe than in many comparable nations. At first China was able to contain the virus, but once additional transmissible varieties appeared, the pandemic grew and in recent weeks, a record number of cases have been reported.
Due to the “zero-covid policy”, tens of millions of Chinese citizens have been living under some kind of lockdown since the pandemic. This policy allows local authorities to impose strict quarantines - even if only a handful of Covid cases are found. Some have gone to extreme lengths, such as making employees sleep inside factories so they can continue working while confined. Many of these cases have only been recently released by Western media, the most prevalent being the recent incident in Urumqi, last Thursday, where a deadly fire killed
10 people who had been quarantined and were unable to leave their home. The city had been on lockdown for more than 100 days, preventing residents from leaving the area and forcing many of them to stay at home. This severe governance has fired up protests in China.
In an unprecedented protest against the zero-Covid policy instituted by leader Xi Jinping, thousands of people participated in demonstrations in towns all around China, from Hotan in the far west to Shanghai and Beijing.On Urumqi Road, which bears the name of the Xinjiang city, hundreds of people gathered on Saturday to mourn the victims of the fire. Many people held up white sheets of paper as a symbol of their opposition to censorship while chanting, "Need human rights, need freedom.", whilst others marched with candle lights in memory of the victims. By Sunday night, large-scale protests had expanded to Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou, and Wuhan, where tens of thousands of people demanded not only that Covid restrictions be lifted but also political freedoms. Some residents of neighbourhoods that were under lockdown tore down boundaries and joined the protests.
Large public demonstrations are incredibly uncommon in China, the Communist Party has tightened control over all facets of life, launched a massive campaign against dissent, destroyed most of civil society, and established a regime of high-tech surveillance. Whilst other demonstrations do tend to occur, concerning narrow specific socio-economic interests, it is the first time that Jinping’s government has seen protests of this scale. Even more alarming, these protests are driven by a discontent with the communist party and directly confront political grievances alongside other concerns about the Covid-19 policies.
Protests in Jinping
How has the communist party responded?
In the Chinese cities of Guangzhou and Chongqing, where protestors clashed with the police on Tuesday night, authorities have quickly eased Covid restrictions while police search for protesters in other cities and the nation's top security authority calls for a crackdown on "hostile elements." The US and Canada urged China not to harm or coerce protestors opposed to Covid-19 lockdowns following days of dramatic protests there, that also sparked international solidarity actions. Authorities abruptly declared on Wednesday afternoon that lockdowns had been lifted in nearly half of the districts throughout the southern Chinese metropolis of Guangzhou. Local officials were instructed in various announcements to lift "temporary control orders" and reclassify some regions as low risk. Mass PCR testing was likewise declared to be over.
Following the protests against President Xi Jinping and his zero-Covid policy, Beijing distanced itself from the situation on Monday, and placed the blame for local authorities' management of coronavirus infections on them. A day after police and security forces appeared to have put an end to protests across at least 18 cities, the National Health Commission reaffirmed Beijing's commitment to the zero-Covid policies and promised to increase immunisation rates among the elderly.
Authorities have long cited low elderly immunisation rates as justification for China's need to keep strict restrictions on the virus. Officials also unveiled an "action plan" on Tuesday to increase immunisation rates amongst this high-risk population. It is believed that increasing said rate will eventually allow the country to reopen and ease restrictive laws. According to officials, as of November 28, 90% of China's population had received two doses of the Covid-19 immunisation, while just 66% of those over the age of 80 had received both
doses.
Chinese officials claimed that rather than Beijing's zero-Covid policy itself, public complaints were more about the local governments' implementation of China's stringent preventive and control measures, which is where the protests were actually focused. They advocated for local officials to concentrate on reducing public discomfort and made a commitment to bolstering central supervision.
Sources:
Comments