Protests across China as anger mounts over zero-COVID policy

• Protesters chant “Xi Jinping, step down! CCP, step down!”

BEIJING (AFP): Hundreds of people took to the streets in Beijing and Shanghai on Sunday to protest against China’s zero-COVID policy in a rare outpouring of public anger against the state.

China’s hardline virus strategy is stoking public frustration, with many growing weary of snap lockdowns, lengthy quarantines and mass testing campaigns.

A deadly fire on Thursday in Urumqi, the capital of northwest China’s Xinjiang region, has become a fresh catalyst for public anger, with many blaming lengthy COVID lockdowns for hampering rescue efforts. Authorities deny the claims.

Hundreds rallied at Beijing’s elite Tsinghua University to protest against lockdowns on Sunday, one witness who wished to remain anonymous told AFP.

“At 11:30 am students started holding up signs at the entrance of the canteen, then more and more people joined. Now there are 200 to 300 people,” they said.

Participants sang the national anthem and “the Internationale” – a standard of the international communist movement – and chanted “freedom will prevail” and “no to lockdowns, we want freedom,” they said.

They described students holding up blank pieces of paper, a symbolic protest against censorship.

And in Shanghai on Sunday afternoon, hundreds of people gathered in the megacity’s downtown to hold what appeared to be a silent protest, an eyewitness told AFP, near where a demonstration had erupted just hours earlier.

Demonstrators holding blank pieces of paper and white flowers stood silently at several intersections, the person said under condition of anonymity, before police officers eventually moved to clear the blocked roads.

Crowds had gathered hours before on nearby Wulumuqi street – named for Urumqi in Mandarin – with video showing protesters chanting “Xi Jinping, step down! CCP, step down!” in a rare display of public opposition to the Chinese Communist Party’s top leadership. The video was widely shared on social media and geolocated by AFP.

Video taken by an eyewitness showed a large crowd shouting and holding up blank pieces of paper as they faced several lines of police.

The attendee said there were minor clashes but that overall the police were “civilised”.