Stringent lockdown and quarantine policies have not only restricted citizens’ mobility for too long, but have also gravely impaired livelihoods, especially of migrant workers and other disadvantaged social groups.
#SOCIAL CONTROL AND THE HUE AND CRY IN TWO HOW TO#
While there are still serious fears of the coronavirus, public perception of how to manage COVID-19 has changed, especially after the Shanghai lockdown earlier this year. How could what had seemed to be overwhelming public support for lockdown policies in 2020 give way to today’s radical protests? The anti-lockdown protests in China over the past few days surprised outside observers. We asked ChinaFile contributors for initial thoughts on the protests’ origins and significance. In Shanghai, where protesters gathered Saturday on the city’s Urumchi Road, chants expressed both support for the fire’s victims as well as calls for the lifting of zero-COVID restrictions, and even demands-extraordinary in a country that does not tolerate political dissent-that China’s Communist Party and its newly reappointed leader, Xi Jinping, “step down.” On Sunday, demonstrators appeared at multiple locations across Beijing, including Peking and Tsinghua universities, where some called for “universal rights” and “freedom of expression” while others held aloft blank sheets of paper, symbols of the many things they were forbidden to say. Throngs of residents took to the streets in anger, where the singing of “The Internationale” and China’s national anthem mingled with calls to end the zero-COVID policy. The protests followed news, spread rapidly across Chinese and international social media, that a fire in an apartment building in Xinjiang’s capital of Urumchi (Urumqi) on Friday had turned deadly, claiming at least 10 lives, possibly as a result of the region’s COVID lockdowns.
Over the weekend, large demonstrations broke out in cities across China.
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