Zero-COVID Protests in China Turn Into Demands for the President’s Resignation

China is witnessing its largest anti-government protests since the Tiananmen Square massacre; activists filled the streets of big cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, to openly call for Xi Jinping’s resignation.

The country has seemed more unsettled than at any previous time in Xi Jinping’s reign; waves of protests have started over the ruthless zero-Covid policies to turn into demands for the end of the Chinese Communist Party’s rule.

For the first time in decades, thousands of people are challenging the Chinese authorities through protests, carrying a series of placards touting anti-regime slogans calling for “democracy” and “freedom of expression.”

While major Chinese cities begin to ease COVID-19 restrictions, the police are using new technologies to track down the demonstrators.

 

China’s Rare Protests: Reflections

Strict COVID-19 policies imposed by the Chinese authorities for 3 years have recently led to China’s biggest protests since Tiananmen Square. Chinese people have found no way out but to demonstrate and put an end to these restrictions and also to their president’s reign.

The widespread protests alarmed investors and led to a sharp fall of China’s currency and its main stock indices.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index fell 4.2% in early trade. It has since pared some losses and was last trading down 2%. The Hang Seng Index, a leading index that tracks the performance of mainland Chinese companies listed in Hong Kong, lost 2%.

The Shanghai index on the Chinese mainland briefly fell 2.2% before paring losses to 0.9% below Friday’s close; Shenzhen fell 1.1%.

On Monday, Nov. 28, the Chinese yuan fell briefly by 0.9% against the US dollar. It was last down 0.6% at $7.206.

Stephen Innes, Managing Partner SPI Asset Management, said the currency market might be the “simplest barometer” for gauging what domestic and foreign investors think.

The market’s tumble comes after protests erupted across China in an unprecedented challenge against the country’s increasingly strict and costly coronavirus policy.

Over the weekend, residents gathered in the country’s largest cities, from financial hub Shanghai to the capital Beijing, to mourn the dead in the Xinjiang fire, speak out against the anti-COVID-19 policy and advocate freedom and democracy.

Such widespread scenes of anger and defiance are exceptionally rare in China.

 

Why Now?

During the last two months, there’s been a whole series of demonstrations against the strict policy imposed by the Chinese government since the COVID-19 emergence. The wave of protests erupted in October “when thousands of workers at a Foxconn plant in Zhengzhou, a large provincial capital in central China, were put in what’s called the closed loop management system,” and they were prevented from leaving the factory, according to Vox.

People were concerned when the virus started to spread within the factory that had 100,000 workers.

That’s why the employers were put into quarantine and isolated, but they were prevented from adequate medical attention or adequate food. They could do nothing except escape the factory.

In November, it was the turn of migrant worker communities in Guangzhou to take the streets and protest over the lockdown, but again, they were not allowed to leave their houses.

As a result, they were obliged to receive everything that they needed to live only from the government. All they got was inadequate medical attention with not enough food. Some started to protest and break the rules, which has led to intensified riots in the third week of November, again at the Zhengzhou Foxconn facility.

However, this was just the start of the really big explosion, which happened following a fire in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province.

Official reports said 10 people died, but credible suggestions indicated there were more.

The protests that engulfed Chinese cities over the weekend reflected growing economic frustration among the country’s youth despite being originally launched over strict Covid-19 restrictions.

The Wall Street Journal stated that the future outlook for Chinese youth appears “bleak,” especially since the official unemployment rate for youth between 16 and 24 years is 18 percent.

 

The Chinese Police Were Kind!

In addition to the Chinese government’s response to the people’s demands for easing restrictions, the police did not respond with violence and brutal arrest as expected.

In fact, the police had a stronger response, which is advanced technology in tracking and arresting demonstrators.

An AFP report said police were using advanced technological tools, from facial recognition software to phone tracking, to target protesters.

The agency quoted Wang Shengsheng, a lawyer who provides free legal advice to the demonstrators, that the police used high-tech methods in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, in addition to relying on surveillance footage and facial recognition.

Wang also said that in Shanghai, “police summoned those they located for questioning and confiscated their phones, probably extracting all their data.”

According to the same report, “Beijing police were able to use phone location data captured by scanners at the gathering site as well as from taxis that dropped off protesters after scanning their health permits.”

In Canton, people told the lawyer their accounts on the encrypted messaging app Telegram were hacked after they registered their identities with the police on their way to protest.

“Any user posting about the protests can easily be tracked because the platforms require a real name to sign up,” according to the same report.

The French Press Agency said that Chinese police officers “filmed demonstrators with small hand-held cameras during a march that took place last Sunday in the embassy district in Beijing.”

The police could then easily arrest a number of protesters, including students.