Hundreds of demonstrators in Shanghai shouted and jostled with police as protests over China’s stringent COVID restrictions flared for a third day following a deadly factory fire in the country’s far west. | Reuters
Urumqi officials abruptly held a news conference in the early hours of Saturday to deny COVID measures had hampered escape and rescue. Many of Urumqi’s 4 million residents have been under some of the country’s longest lockdowns, barred from leaving their homes for as long as 100 days.
On Saturday, the vigil in Shanghai for victims of the factory fire turned into a protest against COVID curbs, with the crowd chanting calls for lockdowns to be lifted. One large group chanted “People there were very passionate, the sight of it was impressive,” the student said, declining to be named given the sensitivity of the matter.
China defends the policy as life-saving and necessary to prevent overwhelming the healthcare system. Officials have vowed to continue with it despite the growing public pushback and its mounting economic toll. The world’s second-largest economy is also facing other headwinds including global recession risks and a property downturn.Widespread public protest is extremely rare in China, where room for dissent has been all but eliminated under Xi, forcing citizens mostly to vent on social media, where they play cat-and-mouse with censors.
Still, he said, the unrest is far from that seen in 1989, when protests culminated in the bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square. He added that as long as Xi had China’s elite and the military on his side, he would not face any meaningful risk to his hold on power.
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