A crucial spark for the public anger was a fire in Urumqi that killed 10 this week. The incident went viral on social media as many surmised that residents could not escape because the building was partially locked down
Public anger in China toward widening COVID-19 lockdowns across the country erupted into rare protests in China’s far western Xinjiang region and the country’s capital of Beijing, as nationwide infections set another record.
Reuters verified that the footage was published from Urumqi, where many of its 4 million residents have been under some of the country’s longest lockdowns, barred from leaving their homes for as long as 100 days. Urumqi officials abruptly held a news conference in the early hours of Saturday to deny COVID-19 measures had hampered escape and rescue, but internet users continued to question the official narrative.A planned lockdown for his compound “Berlin Aiyue” was called off on Friday after residents protested to their local leader and convinced him to cancel it, negotiations that were captured by a video posted on social media.
A separate video shared with Reuters showed Beijing residents in an unidentifiable part of the city marching around an open-air car park on Saturday, shouting “End the lockdown.”Dali Yang, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, said the comments from authorities that the residents of the Urumqi building had been able to go downstairs and thus escape was likely to have been perceived as victim-blaming and further fuelled public anger.
China defends President Xi Jinping’s signature zero-COVID policy as life-saving and necessary to prevent overwhelming the health care system. Officials have vowed to continue with it despite the growing public pushback and its mounting toll on the world’s second-biggest economy.
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