BEIJING – “Down with the Communist Party of China, down Xi Jinping”. The protests that have been shaking China and its zero-Covid policy for weeks do not stop. Very rare scenes of public discontent against the communist leadership a Shanghai where hundreds of people late Saturday night and into the early hours of Sunday gathered at via Wulumuqiin the area of the French concession, chanting slogans against the Pcc and leader Xi.
In the morning, despite the massive police presence, hundreds of other people gathered in Wulumuqi Street shouting “Let them go”, in reference to those arrested last night.
This morning the students of the prestigious school also protested Tsinghua University in Beijing: “We need democracy, we need the rule of law, we need freedom of expression,” they shout. About 200-300 people gathered in front of the university canteen singing the Chinese national anthem and the Internationale.” This is not a normal life, we’ve had enough.”
Also in the Chinese capital, other protests took place tonight at the Peking, another leading university. “Say no to lockdown, yes to freedom. No to the Covid test, yes to food”, read a message written in red paint on a wall of the University. “Open your eyes and look at the world, zero-Covid is a lie”, continued the message. Some students were then removed by some teachers and security personnel.
To protest the censorship someone last night in Shanghai held white paper in hand, which have become the new symbol of these protests. One way to get around censorship on slogans. But the boys shout: “Remove the lockdown a Urumqi, lift the lockdown on Xinjiang, lift the lockdown on all of China!” as the dozens of videos posted on Twitter show. “Serve the people”, “We want freedom”, “We don’t want health codes”.
In fact, everyone here needs a green code on their health app on their smartphone to do anything: go shopping, enter bars and restaurants, parks, shopping centres, take public transport, visit a friend at home. All. Every 24, 48 or 72 hours (depending on the constantly changing regulations) you have to undergo long queues on the street to get a swab. For those who exceed: goodbye green code, and goodbye social life. A tracking system that allows you to identify positives and their close contacts. They must be taken to a “centralized place of isolation”, often a hotel, where they must stay for five days, plus three more days of observation at home. In some cases (often because there is no longer room in the quarantine centers) isolation at home is granted. Even for small handfuls of positives, entire housing developments or districts can go into overnight lockdown. And people, after almost three years of this, are just exhausted.
It has become difficult, if not impossible, to plan one’s daily life, travel, shops, restaurants and any other commercial activity that is ordered to close. The kids on university campuses suffer, forced to stay locked up inside the universities. The workers suffer, such as those of Foxconn, who are also locked up in the factories.
The authorities have promised a more targeted approach in recent weeks but the increase in cases (almost 40 thousand today), due to the arrival of winter and new variants, is complicating the country’s reopening roadmap: China seems to have self-trapped, unable to put an end to this nightmare. Relieving too quickly, it is the fear of the Party, can lead to millions of cases and deaths: only 40% of the over 80s have made the recall, there is no necessary immunity to the virus, the hospital system would not be able to handle it , Chinese vaccines protect slightly less than Western ones (which have never been approved here). In these three years, however, little has been done to correct the course.
Where do the latest protests come from? The wave began after the fire that broke out on Thursday in a building in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, a city in lockdown for over a hundred days: ten dead in the building. Numerous complaints of delays in rescue operations precisely due to the lockdown to which the building was subjected and the difficulties for tenants to get out and save themselves. From Urumqi the protests soon spread to many other cities across the country. Protests have broken out in Beijing – whose center these days is in fact a ghost town – in the Tiantong Beiyuan area. TO Nanjing the students of the University of Communication gathered holding candles to commemorate the victims of the fire in Urumqi. Similar scenes also in the Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts, to that of Tianjin, at the Institute of Communication of Sichuan and at the Beijing Film Academy where students tied blood-stained face masks to the handrails of the institute’s stairways.
On anti-leadership slogans Eric Fish, analyst and author of China’s Millennials, thinks this way: “I don’t think this will ultimately produce political change or threaten the Party’s hold. This is not to say that current events are insignificant. They are clearly a big deal. But at the moment, we often get excited and underestimate the ability of the Party to handle these things and practically make them forget (at least publicly) in a very short time.”