By Gracie Hull
“We’ve cooperated with you for three years. Now, it’s time to give our freedom back.”(Yeung).
This is the rallying cry of Chinese citizens who are fighting back against their Communist government leader, Xi Jinping’s zero-COVID policy. The escalation of lockdowns for the past three years has caused uproars in the streets and on social media throughout China. Citizens are demanding an end to the constant quarantines and the government in power. China, a country well known for keeping a tight grip on its citizens’ personal freedoms, is suddenly faced with a decision. What will be their next move to end the protests? Or will they continue to force their citizens to suffer the consequences of the country’s shutdown?
The 1.4 billion residents of China have been locked in their homes since 2019 and it’s obvious the country is in a chokehold. The continuous increase in Covid cases, especially the elders not keeping up with their vaccines and boosters, put damage on the hospitals and their workers since, “China has inadequate hospitals, with fewer than four intensive care beds per 100,000 people — about a quarter of the rate in the United States.” (Ruwitch). These strains on resources make it difficult for the government to decide if lifting the lockdown would be the right idea for China considering the medical system would collapse if the cases increased enough. On the other hand, keeping the citizens in lockdown poses a comparable risk to the people. A fire in an apartment complex, started by an electrical fault, left a lot of people trapped after the elevator stopped working. Other residents weren’t allowed to escape due to the government regulations banning them from leaving their homes. It was also suggested that, “firefighters may have been delayed in reaching victims due to street-level lockdown restrictions.” (Yeung) which added a higher risk for the citizens who had to stay in their home during the fire. Other instances that were blamed on the zero-COVID policy included a, “bus crash that killed 27 people while transporting residents to a Covid quarantine facility”(Yeung) and the “death of a toddler during a suspected gas leak in a locked-down residential compound.”(Yeung). Additionally, this policy hurts China’s economy. Businesses big or small are crashing due to workers being “pulled out of their jobs to limit a Covid outbreak” (“The Covid Protests”). The production decline, especially with Apple, impacts America as well, considering China is our biggest trading partner.
Residents in China aren’t holding back when it comes to expressing the way they feel about the zero-COVID policy, especially in major cities like Wuhan, Beijing, and Shanghai. It was reported by the American think tank Freedom House that there have been at least 79 protests from the months of June to November. One of the first biggest protests was the poster hanging on a highway bridge in mid-October. The sign read, “We want food, not Covid tests” and “remove dictator and national traitor Xi Jinping.” People continued these messages around the country and they became popular chants at other protests in cities, school campuses, and on social media months later. This poster author was seen as a hero and is known as “the man who lighted the spark in darkness.” (Yuan). However the police and higher authorities don’t see him, or his followers as heroic. The Chinese government hasn’t acknowledged the man or his disappearance ever since the report that “authorities took him from the bridge and into custody, and his whereabouts remains unknown.”(“The Covid Protests”). There has also been a heavy security presence during the protests with police cars and buses lining the streets. Some citizens have shared that they have been “receiving phone calls from authorities asking about their participation”(Yeung), implying that the police are tracking protesters' phone signals to determine where they were the night of riots.
The protests about zero-COVID and seeing his country’s citizens demand for him to step down to create a democracy has left Xi Jinping distraught. Will he double down on his policy which would require an increase of both lockdowns and political repression or will he end the policy since it’s not working to the extent he had hoped? In the beginning of the pandemic, the zero-COVID policy was seen as “ a point of pride for the ruling Communist Party, which has crowed about China's relatively low number of cases and deaths.” (Ruwitch). Although this may have worked for the first six months, people are now starting to diverge from the rules and the cases of COVID are only increasing. The late father of Xi Jinping and previous Chinese leader had said, “the people should be allowed to speak and encouraged to care about state affairs."(Ruwitch), but whether or not Xi Jinping will take this advice will determine what the future holds for China and their citizens protesting the lockdown.
Works Cited
The Covid Protests in China, Explained - The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/article/china-covid-protests.html.
Ruwitch, John. “China's Lockdown Protests and Rising Covid Leave Xi Jinping with '2 Bad Options'.” NPR, NPR, 29 Nov. 2022, https://www.npr.org/2022/11/29/1139509250/china-lockdown-protests-xi-jinping-zero-covid-policy.
Yeung, Jessie, et al. “How a Deadly Fire Ignited Dissent over China's Zero-Covid Policy.” CNN, Cable News Network, 3 Dec. 2022, https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/02/china/china-covid-lockdown-protests-2022-intl-hnk-dst/index.html.
Yuan, Li. “China's Protest Prophet.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 7 Dec. 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/07/briefing/china-protest-peng-lifa.html.
Photo Credit: Photo by STR / AFP via Getty Images
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