Rare protests against China’s ‘zero covid’ policy erupt across country
“There were people everywhere,” said Chen, a 29-year-old Shanghai resident who arrived at the vigil around 2 a.m. Sunday. “At first people were yelling to lift the lockdown in Xinjiang, and then it became ‘Xi Jinping, step down, Communist Party step down!’” he said, giving only his surname because of security concerns.
Chen said he saw about a dozen people get arrested as police clashed with protesters, pushing them into cars before dispersing the crowd around 5 a.m.
Eva Rammeloo, a Shanghai-based Dutch journalist, confirmed to The Washington Post that photos and videos she posted on her verified Twitter account were her own. They depicted protesters both holding up blank sheets of paper — a protest symbol against the country’s pervasive censorship — and laying down flowers for victims as the police look on.
The immediate trigger for the demonstrations, which were also seen at universities in Beijing, Xi’an and Nanjing on Saturday, was a deadly fire in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, in China’s far northwest on Thursday. Ten people, including three children, died after emergency fire services could not get close enough to an apartment building engulfed in flames, prompting accusations from residents that lockdown-related measures had hampered rescue efforts.
Officials on Friday denied that covid restrictions were to blame and said some residents’ “ability to rescue themselves was too weak,” fueling more ridicule and anger that swept across Chinese social media platforms. Residents in Urumqi, one of the most tightly controlled cities in China as a result of a broader security crackdown, turned out to protest Friday. Many waved China’s national flag and called for lockdowns to be lifted.
That unrest spread. On Saturday, Shanghai residents gathered for a candlelight vigil on Wulumiqi Middle Road, where flowers were laid for the victims of the fire. The memorial then turned into a demonstration.
Videos posted on social media show crowds also gathered at universities in Nanjing and Xi’an, holding up their phones as part of a vigil for those killed. In one, a young man who said he was from Xinjiang tells a crowd at Communication University of China in Nanjing, “I am here, I represent myself, I speak for my own hometown. In the fire, the deceased also speak out for all their compatriots who have died.”
Videos posted on social media on Sunday show a crowd of students at Tsinghua University in Beijing holding up blank paper and changing, “Democracy, rule of law, freedom of expression!” Through a loudspeaker, a young woman shouts, “If because we are afraid of being arrested, we don’t speak, I believe our people will be disappointed in us. As a Tsinghua student, I will regret this my whole life.”
Photos posted on social media show young demonstrators pretending as if they are holding up a placard. Others show blurred-out protest slogans on university campuses in Shanghai, Beijing, Wuhan, Chongqing and in the provinces of Zhejiang and Sichuan.
In the name of China’s “zero covid” policy, citizens have lived through almost three years of unrelenting controls that have left many sealed in their homes, sent to quarantine centers or barred from traveling. Residents must submit to repeated coronavirus tests and surveillance of their movement and health status.
The Urumqi fire followed a bus crash in September that killed 27 people as they were being taken to a quarantine center. In April, a sudden lockdown in Shanghai left residents without enough food and prompted online and offline protests. Deaths related to the restrictions, including a 3-year-old who died after his parents were unable to take him to a hospital, have further added to public anger.
Health authorities say this strategy of cutting off covid transmission as soon as possible and quarantining all positive cases is the only way to prevent a surge in severe cases and deaths, which would overwhelm the health-care system. As a result of its low infection rate, China’s population of 1.4 billion has a low level of natural immunity. Those who have been immunized have received domestically made vaccines that have proven less effective against the more infectious omicron variant.
The Xinjiang fire also comes after weeks of especially heightened frustration over the pandemic policies, which were loosened and then tightened again in some places amid a new surge in cases. On Sunday, China reported 39,791 new infections, its fourth consecutive day of a record number of cases.
Videos posted Sunday show crowds near the site of the Shanghai vigil shouting, “Let them go,” an apparent reference to those arrested. In one video, police are seen dragging and carrying a protester from the scene.
Chen said, “I’m not the kind of person that is a leader, but if there’s a chance to speak out or do something to help, I want to.”
Pei-Lin Wu and Vic Chiang in Taipei contributed to this report.