China's stringent COVID curbs flare up public anger against ruling Communist Party
Nov 29, 2022
Beijing [China], November 29 : Several videos circulating on social media have shown crowds chanting the slogan "Communist Party step down, Down with Xi Jinping" in unison over a deadly fire in Urumqi, the capital of China's Xinjiang region that has unleashed excessive public outrage, Inside Over reported.
Large-scale protests in China, especially in Xinjiang, are rare, given the extensive blanket of high-tech surveillance measures authorities have imposed on the region to quell what the government sees as separatist or extremist tendencies.
"Unshakeable" authoritarian regimes are now being shaken at their very core. China has seen nearly 40,000 COVID cases in the last few days, a record in 11 months, the Inside Over reported.
Massive anti-blockade protests broke out simultaneously across China, especially in major cities such as Zhengzhou, Urumqi, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Xinjiang, and Chongqing.
The ongoing outrage is reportedly the largest nationwide mass protest in China since the 1989 crackdown, and it is likely to spread further and eventually change the entire situation.
In defiance of China's zero-Covid policy, hundreds of students on Sunday protested at President Xi Jinping's alma mater, Tsinghua University here.
"Protests have spread to Xi Jinping's alma mater Tsinghua, where a student said: If we don't speak up due to the fear of the [dark regime], I think our people will be disappointed. As a Tsinghua student, I'd regret this for the rest of my life. The crowd called out don't be scared!" tweeted Linda Lew, a Bloomberg reporter.
Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Shanghai, where people were being bundled into police cars. Students have also demonstrated at universities in Beijing and Nanjing.
Hundreds of students from Beijing's Tsinghua University rallied at their campus on Sunday.
Shanghai's 25 million people were put under lockdown for two months earlier this year, an ordeal that provoked anger and protest.
Chinese authorities have since then sought to be more targeted in their Covid-19 curbs.
But that effort has been challenged by a surge in infections as China faces its first winter with the highly transmissible Omicron variant.
