Police officers detain a man in Shanghai, China, last week. Photo / The New York Times
Police officers detain a man in Shanghai, China, last week. Photo / The New York Times
Chinese citizens across the country clashed with officials enforcing the country’s draconian Covid restrictions on Tuesday local time as they tried to break free from quarantined apartment blocks.
Video from the eastern city of Jinan showed residents tussling with dozens of hazmat suit-clad health workers and pushing against a makeshift barrier made from metal shelving that had been used to block access to their building.
Chants ordering authorities to “lift the lockdown” can be heard as the crowds surged against the railing, attempting to tear it apart.
China’s top security body has called for a “crackdown” against “hostile forces”, as people across the country, emboldened by the weekend’s protests, mounted a fresh challenge to the government’s uncompromising zero Covid strategy.
In Taiyuan, the capital of the northern Shanxi province, residents of a locked-down apartment complex pleaded with the authorities to let them out. Clashes over lockdown measures also erupted in the southern mega-cities of Shenzhen and Guangzhou.
Posts on China’s Weibo social network later suggested the Jinan residents reached an agreement with their compound managers to lift Covid restrictions, as local authorities began to make small concessions in a bid to quell the unrest.
The stark warning from the Communist Party’s Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, which oversees all domestic law enforcement in China, came after security services were out in force across China following widespread demonstrations not seen in decades, as anger over unrelenting lockdowns fuelled deep-rooted frustration with the political system.
Xi Jinping is facing a wave of public anger sparked by his “zero Covid” strategy that will soon enter its fourth year. Photo / AP
A deadly fire last week in Urumqi, the capital of the northwestern region of Xinjiang, was the catalyst for the outrage, with thousands of protesters taking to the streets in cities around China.
The commission, which oversees all domestic law enforcement in China, said it was “necessary to crack down on infiltration and sabotage activities by hostile forces in accordance with the law,” according to state news agency Xinhua.
It also said it was crucial to “resolutely crack down on illegal criminal acts that disrupt social order in accordance with the law, and earnestly safeguard overall social stability”.
Police hunting protest participants
Meanwhile, police in China’s major cities have begun to hunt down people who had participated in protests over the weekend.
Police on Tuesday were searching for people who had gone to an anti-Covid protest in eastern Beijing, one protester told The Telegraph.
“I’m very worried,” said the protester, who declined to give her name.
Late on Tuesday, she said she had received an invitation to “have tea” with local police - a euphemism used by the authorities in China to describe meetings to intimidate those they consider security threats.
Another protester told the Reuters news agency they had been asked to show up at a police station with a written record of their activities on Sunday night.
“We are all desperately deleting our chat history,” the protester said. “There are just too many police. Police came to check the ID of one of my friends and then took her away. We don’t know why. A few hours later they released her.”
In some cases, if people refused to answer their phones, police showed up at their door.
Last week, Chinese police officers blocked off access to a site where protesters had gathered in Shanghai. Photo / AP
As part of the interrogations, police asked protesters how many people there were, what time they joined the demonstrations and how they found out about it, a protester told AFP.
Footage from Shanghai appeared to show police on an underground train checking the phones of passengers for banned encrypted messaging apps like Telegram and incriminating photographs or messages indicating they had participated in the protests.
Police in Beijing have also been stopping people on the street and in subway stations and asking to inspect their phones for virtual private networks (VPNs) and banned apps.
VPNs are illegal for most people in China, while the country’s censored internet precludes access to most Western social media apps and major news sites.
As well as cracking down on technology it can’t control, China has built the world’s largest surveillance network, with an estimated 540 million CCTV cameras and advanced facial recognition technology.
During last week’s protests most participants wore face masks, both due to Covid rules and to hide their identities.
With pressure over China’s zero-Covid policy continuing to mount, its foreign ministry posted a mocking message saying the price of “freedom” in the US amounted to a million Covid deaths, tens of thousands of gun deaths per year and victims of Fentanyl deaths.
“What we want is to protect our people’s lives and ensure them a better life,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying wrote on Twitter, which is blocked in China.
China is reporting record numbers of Covid infections, with major outbreaks in some of its biggest cities, including Beijing, Guangzhou and Chongqing.
