As the number of Covid-19 cases has recently resumed rising, reaching 40,000 a day, sporadic protests have erupted in enclosed cities scattered across China: from Lhasa, the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region, in the west, from Guangzhou to south of Zhengzhou in central China, hundreds of people have protested and sometimes clashed violently with police in recent weeks.

The protests reached a new level on November 26, after a fire claimed the lives of 10 people in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region. The relief was slowed down by the imprisonment blame the demonstrators. The “zero Covid” policy, which kept the Chinese population from leading a normal life for three years, is being seriously questioned by demonstrators on the streets of big cities, as well as on university campuses across China.

There were arrests in Shanghai and the people of Beijing were shouting “Free [les personnes arrêtées] in Shanghai! informs Singaporean media duanchuanmei. The country has not seen such a surge of general anger since the events of 1989, which ended in the bloody defeat of the democratic movement in Tiananmen Square.

The protest movement also went up a notch, with very political slogans being heard at the demonstrations: calls for the resignation of President Xi Jinping, demands for the right to freedom of expression and freedom of the press, and even slogans directed against the rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Anything that resonates with 20e CPC Congress held in October last year, following which Xi Jinping, having abolished all the rules for restricting mandates, established himself at the head of the party for the third time and surrounded himself with a dense guard composed exclusively of relatives.