In the streets, a sustained police presence; online, censorship. Chinese authorities were trying Monday to curb the historic anger movement of Chinese exasperated by health restrictions and demanding more freedoms.
On Sunday, a crowd of demonstrators, responding to calls on social networks, took to the streets in particular in Beijing, Shanghai and Wuhan, catching the police off guard.
Among the slogans chanted in unison: “No COVID tests, we are hungry! », « Xi Jinping, resign! CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Withdraw! or “No to confinements, we want freedom”.
By its extent on the territory, the mobilization seems the most important since the pro-democracy riots of 1989.
It is the culmination of a popular discontent that has continued to rise in recent months in China, one of the only countries in the world to still apply a strict “zero COVID” policy, with repeated confinements and tests. Almost daily PCR of the population.
The deadly fire in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang province, has sparked anger among many Chinese, with some blaming health restrictions for blocking rescue work.
Restrictions have been relaxed in the capital of four million inhabitants: residents will be able to travel by bus to do their shopping on Tuesday and parcel deliveries can resume. Businesses in “low risk” areas may also ask to partially resume their activities.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has accused “forces with hidden motivations” of linking the fire to “the local response to COVID-19”, according to its spokesman Zhao Lijian.
Under “the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and (with) the support of the Chinese people, our fight against COVID-19 will be a success”, he assured, in response to the wave of protests over the weekend.
But the demonstrations have also brought out demands for more political freedoms, even for the departure of President Xi Jinping, who has just been reappointed for an unprecedented third term at the head of the country.
Police presence
Monday morning, a police presence was visible in Beijing and Shanghai, near the places of gatherings the day before, noted AFP journalists.
In Shanghai, two people were arrested near Urumqi Street, where a protest took place on Sunday.
One of the two people had “not obeyed our provisions”, explained a policeman to AFP.
The agents were also removing other people present at the scene and ordering them to erase images from their phones, according to an AFP journalist.
The Shanghai police, questioned several times, had still not answered Monday on the number of detentions during the weekend.
A BBC reporter in China, who was covering in Shanghai, was arrested and “beaten by the police”, according to the British media. British Enterprise Minister Grant Shapps called the violence “unacceptable” and “worrying”.
In Shanghai, one of the streets occupied by the crowd during the night was now surrounded by palisades to prevent any new gathering.
Sunday, clashes had opposed police and demonstrators, some carrying flowers or white sheets as symbols of censorship. Several of them were arrested.
Near the Liangma River in Beijing, where more than 400 young Chinese had gathered for several hours on Sunday evening, shouting, among other things, “We are all people of Xinjiang! ‘, police cars were parked and officers were patrolling along the canal.
“This demonstration was a good thing,” a woman in her twenties told AFP, jogging in the neighborhood, saying she had followed her via social networks.
“It sent the signal that people are fed up with these excessive restrictions,” adds the young woman, on condition of anonymity.
“I believe that the government has understood the message and that they will lighten their policy, to be able to get out of it,” she said.
“The censorship could not keep pace,” she said, when protests broke out in various parts of the territory.
But the censorship has since caught up: on Chinese social networks, all information concerning these demonstrations seemed to have been erased on Monday.
On the Weibo platform, a sort of Chinese Twitter, searches for “Liangma River” and “Urumqi Street” yielded no results related to the mobilization.
” Boiling point “
Chinese authorities’ strict control over information and health restrictions on travel within the country make it difficult to verify the total number of protesters over the weekend.
But such a widespread uprising is extremely rare in China, given the crackdown on any form of opposition to the government.
Demonstrations also took place in Guangzhou, Chengdu and Hong Kong, but also in Wuhan, a city in the center of the country where the world’s first case of COVID-19 was detected almost three years ago.
the People’s Daily published a text on Monday warning of “paralysis” and “weariness” in the face of the “zero COVID” policy, without however calling for an end to it.
“People have now reached a boiling point because there is no clear direction on the way forward to end the zero COVID policy,” policy expert Alfred Wu Muluan told AFP. Chinese at the National University of Singapore.
“The party underestimated the anger of the population,” he adds.
The protests have worried investors. And Asian stock markets opened sharply lower on Monday.