“Abolish the corona tests!”, a group of a few hundred demonstrators chants in the middle of the night in the heart of Beijing. A woman in a sheep’s wool coat holds up a white sheet of paper. She demonstrates this way because slogans against the government are forbidden.
There is a lot of police on the scene, both in uniform and in civilian clothes. But when an officer tries to lead the woman away with the white sheet of paper, the bystanders don’t accept it. “Keep your hands off that woman,” they shout. “You can’t grab her, that’s illegal!” To prevent things from getting out of hand, the police let her stand for the time being. That is also unusual: usually the police immediately act harshly if an individual dares to demonstrate. But now the demonstrators and their sympathizers are too many.
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Demonstrations are highly exceptional in China. Yet they are suddenly everywhere this weekend: at about fifty universities, but also in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Wuhan. Images of it are readily shared on Chinese social media, then they also end up on Twitter, and then when they are censored in China, people repost them from Twitter back to Chinese social media.
“We are fed up with the unreasonable and unscientific way we are being deprived of our freedom,” Mr. Liu said on the street in Beijing. He is a tall, thin man in his thirties. “We know that corona is no longer so dangerous. We simply do not want to submit to such unreasonable and unscientific measures any longer.”
Large fire
The immediate reason for the demonstrations is a major fire last week in the city of Ürümqi. That is the capital of western China Xinjiang. That area has been almost completely in lockdown since August. At least ten people died in the fire. Unnecessary, many citizens thought: those lives could have been saved if the building had not been in lockdown. According to eyewitnesses, the fire trucks had difficulty reaching the complex. Videos appeared on social media of house doors that had been tied shut with iron wire from the outside.
You are there to protect us, not oppress us
Chinese protester against police
When the local government, after its own investigation, flatly denied that the building was in lockdown at the time of the fire and tried to shift the blame onto the residents themselves, large groups of people took to the streets in Ürumqi. They waved Chinese flags and sang the Chinese national anthem. A video shows a woman shouting at the police who are blocking her way: “You are there to protect us, not to oppress us.” Others shout that they did not want to starve in their homes.
Rest of the country
The demonstrations have spread to the rest of the country. In Shanghai, people flocked to the street named after Ürümqi, so Sunday night there were also protesters in the heart of Beijing, the center of national power and repression.
The demonstrators there, unlike demonstrations elsewhere, are not asking for the resignation of Chinese President Xi Jinping. They only want to get rid of restrictions that they know are no longer applied in the rest of the world. “We know that the current variants are no longer so dangerous. Why do you have to cause so much misery to people and restrict their freedom in this way?” says a portly man of around forty.