China Covid Protests Highlights: China softens stance on Covid-19 severity, eases curbs

China reported 34,980 coronavirus infections on December 1, out of which 4,278 were symptomatic and 30,702 were asymptomatic, according to Reuters.

This is a slight dip from the number of infections that were reported a day earlier. China reported about 36, 061 cases on November 30. (Reuters)

China's Urumqi, the site of the deadly fire that killed 10 people and triggered protests against strict Covid-19 regulations across the country, has announced that the supermarkets and other businesses in the region are reopening, as per a report in the AP.

The northern city of Hohhot in the Inner Mongolia region, Shijiazhuang and Chengdu restart bus, and subway service and allow restaurants and small businesses to reopen, according to state media.

Jinzhou in the northeast also lifts curbs on movement and allows businesses to reopen. (AP)

Pharmacies in Beijing said that the purchases of N95 masks, which offer a much higher degree of protection than the single-use surgical type, have gone up this week, according to a report by the news agency Reuters.

As China relaxes Covid curbs unevenly, fear fuels residents who are suddenly feeling more exposed to the virus, which authorities had been describing as 'deadly' until this week. (Reuters)

• A residential community in east Beijing sent a notice saying those who have “no social activities” no longer need to get tested regularly "to reduce the risk of crowding."
• Testing booths in the area around east Beijing stop operations.
• Guangzhou resumes dine-in services; no negative PCR test is required
• In Shenzhen, some will be allowed to quarantine at home.
• Barber shops and gyms resume in Chonging

China softened its stance on the severity of the Covid-19 virus on Friday. This message aligns with what health authorities around the world have said for more than a year, however, stands in contradiction with China’s consistent warnings throughout the pandemic over how deadly the disease was. Read more here. 

Demonstrators stage a rally to denounce Chinese government's continued zero-COVID policies in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2022. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)Student protesters hold up a picture of President Xi Jinping called to resign during a commemoration for victims of a recent Urumqi apartment deadly fire blamed on the rigid anti-virus measures, held at a university in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2022. On Tuesday, about a dozen people gathered at the University of Malaya, chanting against virus restrictions and holding up sheets of paper with critical slogans. (AP Photo/Vincent Thian)A placard featuring Chinese President Xi Jinping, is displayed near the Chinese embassy in London, Monday Nov. 28, 2022. Demonstrators gathered outside the Chinese embassy in London on Sunday night, in solidarity over unrest in China. (AP Photo)

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Videos of hundreds protesting in Shanghai started to appear on WeChat on Saturday night. Showing chants about removing COVID-19 restrictions and demanding freedom, they would stay up only a few minutes before being censored. Elliot Wang, a 26-year-old in Beijing, was amazed.

“I started refreshing constantly, and saving videos, and taking screenshots of what I could before it got censored,” said Wang, who only agreed to be quoted using his English name, in fear of government retaliation. “A lot of my friends were sharing the videos of the protests in Shanghai. I shared them too, but they would get taken down quickly.” That Wang was able to glimpse the extraordinary outpouring of grievances highlights the cat-and-mouse game that goes on between millions of Chinese internet users and the country's gargantuan censorship machine.

Chinese authorities maintain a tight grip on the country's internet via a complex, multi-layered censorship operation that blocks access to almost all foreign news and social media, and blocks topics and keywords considered politically sensitive or detrimental to the Chinese Communist Party's rule. Videos of or calls to protest are usually deleted immediately. (PTI)

Mao Zedong once declared that “the outstanding thing” about China’s people “is that they are ‘poor and blank’”. He called it “a good thing” for “poverty gives rise to the desire for change, the desire for action and the desire for revolution”. Absolute poverty and economic impoverishment might be things of the past, according to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), but the latest protests across China suggest that its zero-Covid policy is clearly making the people “poor” once again and not just in monetary terms.

China will hold a memorial service for late leader Jiang Zemin at 10 a.m. (0200 GMT) on Dec. 6 in Beijing, state media Xinhua reported on Thursday. (Reuters)

The deaths of Chinese Communist leaders are always fraught moments of political theater and especially so now with the passing of Jiang Zemin soon after a wave of public defiance on a scale unseen since Jiang came to power in 1989.

China’s sternly autocratic current leader, Xi Jinping, must preside over the mourning for Jiang, who died Wednesday at 96, while he also grapples with widespread protests against China’s exceptionally stringent COVID restrictions. The demonstrations have at times also boldly called for China to return to the path of political liberalization that seemed at least thinkable, even openly discussable, under Jiang during the 1990s. (Read more)

As China works to raise COVID-19 vaccination rates among its elderly, essential if the country is to open up again and live with COVID, many older people remain fearful that the treatment will make them sick, as per a report in the Reuters. 

China's health authority, according to the report, said that it would aim to improve accessibility and launch targeted programmes in nursing homes and leisure facilities as part of a new vaccination drive among the over-60s. It also pledged to make renewed efforts to publicize the benefits of vaccination.

76-year-old Shanghai resident Yang Zhijie told Reuters that she was scared of being vaccinated. 'Without the vaccination, I already have so many diseases, and after I do it I'm scared the diseases will become more serious,' she said. A 70-year-old Cai Shiyu said, 'If I were fit for vaccination, I would definitely get it.'

Citizens have been demonstrating against the strict zero-COVID rules, and their movement, which is now no longer limited to China alone, is widely being dubbed the ‘white paper revolution’. This is because of the blank sheets of white A4-sized paper many of the demonstrators have been seen holding during these protests.

Many of the protesters have been calling for the resignation of Chinese President Xi Jinping and the end of the Chinese Communist Party’s rule. Read more here. 

China will allow people infected with coronavirus to quarantine at home under certain conditions, two sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

One of the Reuters sources, however, added that not all positive cases will be allowed to quarantine at home unconditionally. Pregnant women, the elderly, and people with underlying illnesses will qualify to isolate at home. People who have been in close contact with the infected person will also be allowed to isolate at home if the home environment meets certain conditions, the sources said.

Chinese authorities also plan to step up antigen tests for coronavirus and reduce the frequency of mass testing and regular nucleic acid tests, the two sources added. (Reuters)

Less than 24 hours after violent protests in Guangzhou, authorities, according to a report by Reuters said they were lifting temporary lockdowns. A district would allow in-person classes in schools to resume and would reopen restaurants and other businesses including cinemas.

China is softening its tone on the severity of COVID-19 and easing some coronavirus restrictions even as its daily case toll hovers near records, after anger over the world’s toughest curbs morphed into protests across the country. Even as its daily case toll hovers near records, several cities are lifting district lockdowns and allowing businesses to reopen.

In making those announcements, health authorities did not mention the protests, which ranged from candle-lit vigils in Beijing to clashes with the police on the streets of Guangzhou on Tuesday and at an iPhone factory in Zhengzhou last week. Read more here.

Global media have sought to paint the protests, especially those taking place on or around prestigious Chinese university campuses, as popular outbursts of anti-lockdown and anti-Zero-Covid sentiment. It has been suggested that President Xi Jinping may be losing the political gamble of forcefully implementing his “dynamic zero” policy (qingling). Read the full explainer here.

As protests against stringent Covid-19 measures imposed by the Chinese government, under President Xi Jinping’s rule, continue to escalate in different parts of the country on Wednesday, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom have voiced their support for protesters.

British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly on Monday said that the Chinese government should “take notice” of the protests happening on the streets of China against the stringent anti-COVID measures implemented in the country. The White House, moreover, in a statement, said that “We’ve long said everyone has the right to peacefully protest, in the United States and around the world. Read more here. 

China's southwestern city of Chongqing will allow close contacts of people with COVID-19, who fulfil certain conditions, to quarantine at home, a city official said in a news conference on Wednesday. (Reuters)

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Wednesday announced the passing of former Chinese President and General Secretary of the CCP, Jiang Zemin. In a letter written to the citizens of the country (originally in Chinese), the CCP said “Our beloved Comrade Jiang Zemin suffered from leukemia combined with multiple organ failure, and the rescue failed. He died in Shanghai at 12:13 on November 30, 2022 at the age of 96.”

The Indian Express looks back at the life and career of Jiang Zemin, and the long lasting impact he had on China. Read More

Plucked from obscurity to head China’s ruling Communist Party after the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989, former Chinese President Jiang Zemin was expected to be just another transitional figurehead, destined to be a footnote in history.

Yet Jiang, who died on Wednesday aged 96, confounded the naysayers, chalking up a list of achievements after breaking China out of diplomatic isolation in the post-Tiananmen era, mending fences with the United States and overseeing an unprecedented economic boom. Read More

When Yang, a Shanghai office worker, saw video clips of a burning building in western China, a disaster in which 10 people were killed, she said she could not contain her anger over tough COVID-19 measures three years into the pandemic.

"Things reached a tipping point, we had to come out," Yang, 32, who declined to be identified by her full name given fear of reprisals, told Reuters.

While united against China's stifling "zero-COVID" measures, all six also spoke of a yearning for broader political freedoms, 33 years after students occupied China's Tiananmen Square in 1989. (Reuters)

As China, where the Covid-19 virus first hit, continues to live under the pandemic’s shadow, unprecedented protests have broken out, many believe on a scale not seen in the country since 1989.

On Thursday night, 10 people died in a fire at an apartment complex in Ürümqi, the capital of the western Chinese province of Xinjiang. The people had been locked in their apartments due to China’s strict home isolation policies. Since the incident, protests have picked up across the country, with calls to end the brutal curtailment of people’s freedoms in the name of Covid. As they gather steam, these protests have increasingly drawn comparisons to the protests of the late 1980s that culminated with what happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

What were the Tiananmen protests, what led to it, and what is its long-lasting legacy? We explain.

Beijing city reported 2378 new Covid cases during 15 hours to 3 p.m. on Wednesday. (Reuters)

Former Chinese President Jiang Zemin has died, Chinese state media reported. At the age of 96, Jiang died from leukemia and multiple organ failure in Shanghai at around 12 p.m., the official Xinhua news agency said. 

Jiang died at 12:13 p.m. (0413 GMT) in his home city of Shanghai, the official Xinhua news agency said, publishing a letter to the Chinese people by the ruling Communist Party, parliament, Cabinet and the military announcing the death. Read More

The Chinese city of Guangzhou relaxed COVID prevention rules in several districts on Wednesday in an effort to implement rules authorities announced this month aimed at easing the burden of the strict zero-COVID policy, a report by the Associated Press stated.

One district, Conghua, said it would allow in-person classes in schools to resume and would reopen restaurants and other businesses including cinemas. Parts of the city classified as 'high-risk' would remain under lockdown. (AP)

Hong Kong's security minister on Wednesday warned that the city's protests against China's anti-virus restrictions were a “rudiment of another color revolution” and urged residents not to participate in activities that might hurt national security. “This is not a coincidence but highly organized,” he told reporters at the legislature. 

According to a report by Associated Press, Chris Tang alleged that some active members of the widespread rallies in 2019 also took part in the latest Hong Kong events. “I have previously mentioned that we face national security risks. Some people are unwilling to give and always want to endanger our national security and Hong Kong's security. This is exactly the situation I am talking about,” he said. 

China’s ruling Communist Party has vowed to “resolutely crack down on infiltration and sabotage activities by hostile forces,” following the largest street demonstrations in decades staged by citizens fed up with strict anti-virus restrictions. 

While it did not directly address the protests, the statement from the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission released late Tuesday serves as a reminder of the party’s determination to enforce its rule. Read more.

People in China's southern manufacturing hub of Guangzhou clashed with white hazmat-suited riot police on Tuesday ngiht. Videos circulating on social media showed that the cashes took place on Tuesday night, and were caused by a dispute over lockdown curbs.The government of Guangzhou, a city hard-hit in the latest wave of infections, did not immediately respond to arequest for comment.

Home to many rural migrant factory workers, Guangzhou is a port city, located north of Hong Kong in Guangdong province, where officials announced late on Tuesday they would allow close contacts of COVID cases to quarantine at home rather than being forced to go to makeshift shelters. Read more.

"It is a cliché about protests in authoritarian societies that they appear unlikely ex ante, inevitable in retrospect, and uncertain in the train of events they unleash. But, based on preliminary assessment, the widespread protests against China’s Covid policy are unprecedented and will test President Xi Jinping’s authority." 

"Protests in China are not new. For years, the Chinese state used protests as a safety valve and an information conduit, a way of identifying fault lines in society and responding to them. Most of those protests did not dent the authority of the Communist Party. They were used to strengthen it. But that strategy had four assumptions," writes Pratap Bhanu Mehta. Read here.

Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Tuesday that everyone in China should be allowed to protest and express themselves, and that Canadians were closely watching the protests against the country's zero-COVID policy.

A report by Reuters highlights what Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa. He said, 'Canadians are watching very closely, everyone in China should be allowed to express themselves, should be allowed to share their perspectives and indeed protest.' 'We're going to continue to ensure that China knows we'll stand up for human rights, we'll stand with people who are expressing themselves,' he added.

China is currently witnessing the biggest wave of civil disobedience since Chinese President Xi Jinping took power a decade ago. Citizens are protesting the stringent zero-COVID policy, that has been put in place by the Chinese government. Triggered by the death of 10 people in Urumqi fire over the weekend, protesters took to the streets to demonstrate their anger against the revival of censorship and demanded Xi Jinping to step down by holding up blank sheets of paper. China police have been in force on its streets to prevent further protests. 

Protesters in China opposing COVID-19 lockdowns should not be physically harmed or intimidated, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said on Tuesday.

According to a report by Reuters, Kirby told CNN, 'We don't want to see protesters physically harmed, intimidated or coerced in any way. That's what peaceful protest is all about and that's what we have continued to stand up for whether it's in China or Iran or elsewhere around the world...' (Reuters)

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