Following the Covid protests, China intends to “shut down”

• Following rare protests against Covid rules in Chinese cities over the weekend, China’s top security agency has called for a crackdown on “hostile forces.”
• Police have swarmed the now-empty protest locations, and some demonstrators claim that police have phoned them to inquire about their whereabouts.
• Meanwhile, the nation’s health professionals advise that lockdowns be “established and immediately lifted.”

Police have swarmed the now-empty protest locations, and some demonstrators claim that police have phoned them to inquire about their whereabouts.

Meanwhile, the nation’s health professionals advise that lockdowns be “established and immediately lifted.”

China has recently seen unprecedented levels of new cases.

With widespread testing, quarantines, and sudden lockdowns, local authorities crack down on even minor breakouts in this one large economy that has a zero-Covid policy.

Numerous Chinese citizens protested in the streets over the weekend, calling for an end to the stringent regulations. A few even made the unusual call for President Xi Jinping to step down.

However, a significant police presence in China’s major cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai, appears to have put a stop to additional demonstrations on Monday and Tuesday.

It was “essential to crack down on infiltration and sabotage actions by hostile forces in accordance with the law,” according to the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission of the ruling Communist Party, which is in charge of overseeing domestic law enforcement throughout China.

The latest rallies, which started after a fire broke out in a high-rise building in Urumqi, western China, on Thursday and killed 10 people, were not mentioned in the statement, according to the Chinese news agency Xinhua.

Although the authorities dispute this, many Chinese think city-wide COVID limitations were a factor in the deaths.

On Tuesday, it was observed that cops were patrolling in great numbers in areas of Beijing and Shanghai where protests had taken place the previous weekend.

Additionally, there were reports of 150 police officers arriving at a busy retail district in the southern city of Shenzhen in response to social media rumours of a planned demonstration there.

Additionally on Tuesday, Chinese health officials pledged to lessen “inconvenience” brought on by the Covid outbreak.

Lockdowns should be “placed and relaxed immediately,” according to Mi Feng, spokesman for China’s National Health Commission (NHC), and “excessive control measures should be regularly remedied.”

Health officials had earlier urged for more targeted Covid controls, claiming that local roll-outs were the cause of concerns about tight curbs rather than a result of federal regulations.

Authorities changed the local Covid policy in the southern Guangdong province on Tuesday night, allowing certain close relatives of Covid victims to quarantine at home rather than in official facilities.

In other news, the UK has invited the Chinese ambassador to a meeting following the beating and brief detention of BBC journalist Ed Lawrence on Sunday when he was covering anti-government shutdown protests.

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