Beijing's Zero-COVID Protests

"[It is necessary] to strengthen the management and service guarantee [of quarantine centres and field hospitals where people who test positive for COVID-19 or ha.cve been in close contact with an infected person are taken by police]."

"[Authorities must] further accelerate [their construction and] coordinate the allocation of space, facilities, materials, personnel and other resources."

Beijing city government spokesperson Xu Hejian

People sing slogans while gathering on a street in Shanghai. (Photo by Hector RETAMAL / AFP)

 

"On the second night of protests, 2,000 miles northwest of the Foxconn factory, a fire broke out in a residential compound in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang region. Ten died. Neighbours videoed the inferno on their phones, triggering yet another wave of anger online. Some pointed out that the youngest victim was only three and had lived almost his entire life under zero Covid. Others speculated that doors had been sealed in the block as part of the lockdown, meaning victims couldn’t escape."

"Late on Friday night, the Urumqi authorities made things worse with a press conference which seemed to blame the victims for their ‘lack of survival know-how’. Fury, and protests, ensued."

"Whether the fire was made worse by lockdown or not, the tragedy and the callous official response confirmed what many already suspected: their lives are cheap in the name of pandemic control."

Cindy Yu, Assistant Editor, The Spectator, U.K.

 

In some parts of China's capital, residents began sweeping items off supermarket shelves, while the urgency of their demands were overwhelming delivery apps on Friday. The city government had ordered an urgent need to speed up construction of COVID-19 quarantine centres and field hospitals. China's Zero-COVID policy is not to be relaxed, its government has made it quite clear that it will not tolerate the spread of the pathogen, and a recent upsurge in cases has only increased its resolve.

 

Chinese citizens, beyond weary with the constant lockdowns and stern conditions that have compromised their quality of life for too long, are desperate to see an end to these unlivable conditions and the constant threat of isolation, impairing their ability to work, to attend school, to buy food, to acquire needed medications, in short, the ruination of normal life, being forced to live under abysmally unnatural circumstances. Deprived of normalcy.

 

The uncertainty and fear surrounding unconfirmed reports of lockdowns in some select districts in the capital fuelled a demand for food and other basic living supplies fuelling unusually large turnouts of shoppers in the northern suburbs of the city, resulting in market shelves emptying of products in quick order, in a city of 21 million people.

 

Across the country daily cases of COVID are reaching record numbers with Friday alone notching up 32,695 new cases, almost half of which were in Beijing, mostly asymptomatic. Field hospitals along with improvised quarantine centres have been thrown together in gymnasiums, exhibition centres, where large open indoor spaces have become synonymous with poor sanitation, scarce food supplies, overcrowding and lighting that remains bright for 24 hours a day.

 

Instructions not to leave compounds have gone out to most residents, watching themselves being fenced in, where workers in white hazmat suits stop unauthorized people to ensure residents have recent negative test results on cellphone health apps before they can gain entry. University campuses are closed, students shifted to online classes. Grocery delivery service is at full capacity. Some delivery personnel are  unable to appear for work at grocery deliveries, with their own compounds locked down. 

 

The World Health Organization has called for a change in operations from the zero-COVID strategy, a recommendation that the Chinese Communist Party rejects. Cases and death counts in China remain low in comparison to other parts of the world, yet Beijing insists on isolating every case to entirely eliminate the virus. Where other governments eased antivirus controls, relying on vaccinations and immunity from past infections to aid in death prevention and serious illness, China's President Xi Jinping is immovable in his conviction that China can tame Nature.

 

Confronting authorities in Shanghai, some protesters called for Chinese leader Xi Jinping to step down