Covid-19: Brutal lockdowns trigger rare protests in China’s Guangzhou City
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: From angry and widespread protests—accompanied by loud slogans like “Let it Rot”, to “Lie Down”—the Chinese people’s frustrations over the brutal implementation of the Zero Covid policy to confine them behind doors, found a vent in violence in Guangzhou City where hundreds of people clashed with police as they marched against the government’s strict orders and pushed over police barriers at several places on Tuesday, the media reported.
In videos circulated on social media, they saw hundreds of people marching in the streets and pushing over police barriers in Guangzhou’s Haizhu district, which has been in lockdown since late last month.
Following a fresh outbreak of the pandemic, the government had multiplied Covid curbs in the factory hub of Guangzhou, where infections ballooned to a five-month high over the last weekend. Repeated and prolonged lockdowns adversely affected factory production across China in recent months of the pandemic’s resurgence and disrupted global supply chains.
The reports said that severe restrictions, amid food shortage, fueled public anger, with some residents in Guangzhou, one of the country’s biggest cities, staging rare protests against the stringent rules.
Spontaneous demonstrations took place in several “urban villages,” mainly poorer neighborhoods where migrant workers live, Hong Kong Economic Journal reported. The local government sent multiple police vehicles to quell the protests.
The Chinese, particularly in urban centers, are becoming increasingly agitated after almost three years of restrictions under their Communist country’s Zero Covid policy. Relentless lockdowns continued even as officials tried to pacify angry masses by shortening the mandatory quarantine period for inbound travelers to seven days and scrapping a system where airlines are penalized for carrying infected passengers.
Food shortages and difficulty getting timely medical treatment are some of the biggest complaints lodged by those locked into their homes for weeks or even months to quell fresh outbreaks.
A few posts discussing the protests, which some believed were riots, could be found on Weibo and WeChat, two of the largest social media platforms in China, where online discussions are often censored to control public opinion.
As of Tuesday morning, hashtags on Weibo such as “Guangzhou Haizhu district riot” and “Haizhu riot” remained visible, but they officially deleted posts that could previously be seen.
Officials in Guangzhou locked down two other districts, Panyu and Liwan, with new infections surging to 5,124 on Monday. Huang Kunming, the Communist Party chief of Guangdong, the province where Guangzhou is located, ordered officials to eliminate the coronavirus in communities “as soon as possible,” the media reported, citing an internal meeting on Monday evening.
On Monday alone, China reported over 17,000 new Covid cases, the highest tally since late April. While Guangzhou accounts for most of them, the southwestern megacity of Chongqing also posted a surge to 2,948 cases.
