Cities throughout China are locking down and enforcing mass COVID testing as the nation recorded record-high COVID-19 infections last week – more than 30 000 new cases each day.
This has sparked countrywide protests against the strict zero-COVID regime, with hundreds of protesters gathering to express outrage at continuing to be confined to their homes at the end of 2022.
The current biggest outbreak is in the southern city of Guangzhou and southwestern Chongqing, although hundreds of new infections are reported daily in cities like Chengdu, Jinan, Lanzhou and Xian, according to Reuters. Others, including Beijing, Shanghai and the Hainan island resort city of Sanya, have limited the movements of recent arrivals.
Analysts from Nomura Holdings, a Japanese financial holding company, say more than 20% of China’s GDP is under lockdown as a result – a share larger than the entire British economy. "Shanghai-style full lockdowns could be avoided, but they might be replaced by more frequent partial lockdowns in a rising number of cities due to surging COVID case numbers," the company maintains.
Recent protests have taken place in conjunction with the mourning of at least 10 lives lost in an apartment fire in Xinjiang, a death toll that many claim would have been lower if it weren’t for the stringent COVID measures.
Debates online argue that firefighters and those trying to flee the fire were obstructed by locked doors and other controls, but authorities have denied that COVID-related precautions exacerbated the situation, where firefighters took three hours to put out the apartment fire.
According to Associated Press, protests have since spread throughout Shanghai, Nanjing, Chengdu, Chongqing, Urumqi, and Korla. Videos posted online show people armed with pepper spray gathering against police and chanting, “Remove the Communist Party! Remove Xi Jinping!” and “No more lockdowns!”
