qocsuing: China protests spread as demonstrators call for Xi to step down over COVID policies

qocsuing

China protests spread as demonstrators call for Xi to step down over COVID policies

Protesters pushed to the brink by China's strict COVID measures in Shanghai called for the removal of the country's all-powerful leader and clashed with police Sunday as crowds took to the streets in several cities in an astounding challenge to the government.To get more Shanghai breaking news, you can visit citynewsservice.cn official website.

Police forcibly cleared the demonstrators in China's financial capital who called for Xi Jinping's resignation and the end of the Chinese Communist Party's rule — but hours later people rallied again in the same spot, and social media reports indicated protests also spread to at least seven other cities, including the capital of Beijing, and dozens of university campuses.

Largescale protests are exceedingly rare in China, where public expressions of dissent are routinely stifled — but a direct rebuke of Xi, the country's most powerful leader in decades, is extraordinary.

Three years after the virus first emerged, China is the only major country still trying to stop transmission of COVID-19 — a "zero COVID" policy that regularly sees millions of people confined to their homes for weeks at a time and requires near-constant testing. The measures were originally widely accepted for minimizing deaths while other countries suffered devastating waves of infections, but that consensus has begun to fray in recent weeks.

Then on Friday, 10 people died in a fire in an apartment building, and many believe their rescue was delayed because of excessive lockdown measures. That sparked a weekend of protests, as the Chinese public's ability to tolerate the harsh measures has apparently reached breaking point.
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered late Saturday in Shanghai, which experienced a devastating lockdown in the spring in which people struggled to secure groceries and medicines and were forcefully taken into centralized quarantine.

On a street named for the city in China's far west where the fire happened, one group of protesters brought candles, flowers and signs honoring those who died in the blaze. Another, according to a protester who insisted on anonymity, was more active, shouting slogans and singing the national anthem.

In a video of the protest seen by The Associated Press, chants sounded loud and clear: "Xi Jinping! Step down! CCP! Step down!" Xi, arguably China's most dominant leader since Mao Zedong, was recently named to another term as head of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, and some expect him to try to stay in power for life.

The protester and another, who gave only his last name, Zhao, confirmed the chants. Both insisted on having their identities shielded because they fear arrest or retribution.

The atmosphere of the protest encouraged people to speak about topics considered taboo, including the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in which the ruling Communist Party had ordered troops to fire on pro-democracy student demonstrators, the unnamed protester said. Some also called for an official apology for the deaths in the fire in Urumqi in the Xinjiang region. One member of the Uyghur ethnic group that is native to Xinjiang and has been the target of a sweeping security crackdown shared his experiences of discrimination and police violence.

"Everyone thinks that Chinese people are afraid to come out and protest, that they don't have any courage," said the protester, who said it was his first time demonstrating. "Actually in my heart, I also thought this way. But then when I went there, I found that the environment was such that everyone was very brave."

Initially peaceful, the scene turned violent in the early hours of Sunday. Hundreds of police surrounded the protesters and broke up the first more active group before they came for the second as they tried to move people off the main street. The protester said that he saw multiple people being taken away, forced by police into vans, but could not identify them.