As officials in China attempted to quell growing calls for political freedoms and an end to Covid lockdowns on Monday, security officers detained individuals and appeared to stop a planned protest.
In a wave of protests not witnessed in China since the pro-democracy uprisings of 1989 were put down, people in major cities and university campuses around the country have taken to the streets.
Anger has been building since last week, when a deadly fire broke out in Urumqi, the capital of northwest China’s Xinjiang region, with many residents pointing the finger at Covid-19 lockdowns for preventing quicker responses.
On Monday, Beijing said local officials had “made clear the facts and refuted this information and smears,” implying that “forces with ulterior motives” were behind attempts to link the fire to Covid measures.
As reported by AFP, three protesters were led away by police from a gathering spot in Shanghai’s financial district on the weekend. Censors in China also attempted to remove references to the social media-fueled protests.
Later on Monday, a protest was set to take place in Beijing, but it was called off as police blocked off a major intersection near the intended rallying spot in the city’s western Haidian area.
In the past month, a lone protester hoisted banners on the neighbouring Sitong Bridge condemning President Xi Jinping before being detained. At the same time, police trucks surrounded the road leading to the bridge.
After a successful gathering the day before along the Liangma river, demonstrators intended to march to the bridge.
According to an AFP witness, dozens of people gathered at the Chinese University in Hong Kong, where massive democratic rallies broke out in 2019, to pay their respects to the victims of the Urumqi fire.
Residents and workers held flowers and hoisted banners in the Central area of the city’s economic hub. After the 2019 protests, Beijing enacted a sweeping national security law on the city.
Protesters have exploited the demonstrations to demand more liberties. President Xi, who has been reappointed to an unprecedented third term as China’s leader, has been met with calls for his resignation.
On Sunday, many people converged on Wulumuqi street (Urumqi is the Mandarin name for Beijing), and police clashed with demonstrators as they sought to disperse them.
On Sunday afternoon, hundreds of people gathered in the exact location, seemingly in quiet protest, carrying blank pieces of paper and flowers.
The BBC reported that one of its journalists covering the protests in Shanghai was arrested and beaten by police. Still, the Chinese foreign ministry said that the journalist had not identified himself as a BBC staffer.
On Monday, a minister in the British government called the acts of the Chinese police “unacceptable.”
Beijing saw at least 400 people gathering on the Liangma riverbank for many hours, with some protesters yelling, “We are all Xinjiang people! Go, Chinese people!”
AFP reporters on the scene of Monday’s protests in Shanghai reported seeing a significant police presence and temporary blue barricades erected along the sidewalks to prevent additional gatherings.
An AFP photographer then witnessed three people being held by police at the scene, with officers blocking onlookers from taking photos or videos.
On Monday, despite several requests for information, Shanghai police still had yet to say how many people were in custody. On Sunday, an AFP reporter also captured footage of detentions.
By Monday, it seemed like state censors in China had successfully scrubbed social media completely clean of any mention of the protests.
On Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, all results for the search terms “Liangma River” and “Urumqi Road” had been removed.
The zero-Covid policy and China’s tight information control make it difficult to verify protester numbers across the large country independently.
Authorities crack down hard on any resistance to the central government, so large-scale protests like this are pretty unusual.
Frustration with the central government’s virus policy, under which officials impose sudden lockdowns, extended quarantines, and mass testing campaigns over just a handful of cases, has fueled the spread of the protests on social media.
Protests were also reported from Guangzhou and Chengdu and took place on Sunday in Wuhan, the central city where Covid-19 first emerged.
A jogger in her twenties who saw the protests on social media said she had come to the scene of the Beijing riverfront event on Monday, where rows of police vehicles were stationed.
The runner, who did not wish to provide his name, added, “This protest was a good thing; it sent the signal that people were fed up with too strong restrictions.”
The People’s Daily, China’s official newspaper, published an editorial Monday morning warning against “paralysis” and “battle-weariness” in the fight against Covid. Still, it stopped far short of calling for an end to the hardline policy.
One expert on Chinese politics from Singapore’s National University, Alfred Wu Muluan, told AFP that “people have now reached a boiling point” because the government failed to provide a “clear path” to ending the zero-Covid policy.
“The party has underestimated the people’s anger.”
On Monday, China announced a record high of 40,052 domestic Covid-19 cases, which is still relatively small compared to the caseloads in the West during the pandemic’s peak.