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Resurgence of COVID-19 in China and impact on the world

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srh

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Right now China is reporting that around 3,300 people have died in China because of coronovirus. This is way less than number of deaths reported in Italy (almost 3 times more death) or Spain (almost double more death). France and USA are fast approaching same number of deaths as China.

This does not make sense. The virus was originated in China and I dont remember any instance where a virus has caused more deaths in other places than where it was originated more. So is China lying about the number of deaths in their country? What do they gain from this lying?
 
You haven't shown any evidence or argument here apart from how is it lower than Italy.

Simple answer is China didn't mess arond, they sealed off the town of Wuhan very quickly. Italy and UK have been clueless, changing policies due to pressure from certain areas.
 
To be fair if any country will have a better immune system to cope with this virus, then it would be China given their love for certain cuisine!
 
i think the best way to find out is call a local funeral home in wuhan and check out your waiting time. Unfortunately ruthless way to find out

need a chinese speaker and ask about prices of urns and see the difference pre corona and now
 
srh said:
Some Wuhan residents think government is not telling truth:

https://us.yahoo.com/news/wuhan-residents-dismiss-official-coronavirus-164859600.html
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I dont think most governments are telling the truth, the UK and US are lying through their teeth. Ill give you one example, 2 metres is not enough distance esp in door as scientists have condluded 8 metres is a safe distance.

China will make up some data, there is no doubt but it cannot be argued China is recovering faster than almost every other nation. Chinese will come out of this better than most inc deaths and economy,
 
Truth is, there is no way to verify official Chinese statistics.

I think many countries are hiding actual numbers in order to avoid mass panic. One example would be North Korea. They say they have zero infection but I highly doubt that claim.

Most countries don't have sufficient resources to test everyone for the virus.
 
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sweep_shot said:
Truth is, there is no way to verify official Chinese statistics.

I think many countries are hiding actual numbers in order to avoid mass panic. One example would be North Korea. They say they have zero infection but I highly doubt that claim.

Most countries don't have sufficient resources to test everyone for the virus.
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Personally I think China and Iran are lying for sure while India is also suspect
 
High possibility China is not telling the truth. I have heard through a source that uses the deep dark web that 1000s and 1000s apparently well over 30,000 are estimated to be dead in China and there is a huge cremation site where they are just burning body after body. Well I don't know if this is true but as it is Chinese it could very well be.. Who knows..
 
Nah they are lying. I doubt any country has accurate numbers. Accuracy is another thing, countries like China, Iran, Russia and Syria are trying their best hide virus cases. Ratios coming out of these countries don't add up.
 
China and the truth? What is this mysterious thing that you speak of?

They can start by admitting to the world that they did this in the first place.
 
Every South Asian country is most definitely hiding the numbers either directly or indirectly including India.

And China isn't even a question. There's no way they have fewer deaths than Italy and Spain....
 
Romali_rotti said:
High possibility China is not telling the truth. I have heard through a source that uses the deep dark web that 1000s and 1000s apparently well over 30,000 are estimated to be dead in China and there is a huge cremation site where they are just burning body after body. Well I don't know if this is true but as it is Chinese it could very well be.. Who knows..
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I see. :inti
 
Varun said:
China and the truth? What is this mysterious thing that you speak of?

They can start by admitting to the world that they did this in the first place.
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They won't accept. They also have to sell the vaccine and their medical equipments, masks etc. :inti
 
Wuhan Residents Claim The City’s True Death Toll From Coronavirus Is Close To 47,000

Though the Chinese government claimed that only around 2,535 residents of Wuhan died from the deadly coronavirus, residents of the city are saying that the number is substantially higher, with one estimate claiming that nearly 47,000 people died from the disease, per Radio Free Asia.

Though the Chinese government claimed that only around 2,535 residents of Wuhan died from the deadly coronavirus, residents of the city are saying that the number is substantially higher, with one estimate claiming that nearly 47,000 people died from the disease, per Radio Free Asia.

“Anyone looking at that [death toll] figure will realize, anyone with any ability to think, ‘what are they talking about [2,535] people?'” said one resident, who stated that no one in Wuhan believed the stated fatality rate was real.

Social media posts have estimated that the seven funeral homes in the city were handing out 3,500 urns daily over the past week and a half. This would put the tally of fatalities at around 42,000. Other approximations, based on the cremation furnace capacity, claimed that the total number of deaths was a staggering 46,800.

“It can’t be right… because the incinerators have been working round the clock, so how can so few people have died?” a Wuhan resident surnamed Zhang asked.

A source with knowledge in the provincial civil affairs bureau claimed that Wuhan had 28,000 cremations within just one month. The insider added that many of the fatalities were people that had died at home and had neither been diagnosed with nor treated for the virus.

The source added that the Chinese government is likely aware of the true number of fatalities, adding that each funeral home must report data on cremations to the government two times each day.

Strengthening the source’s claim is the fact that moratorium workers from other parts of China were alleged to have been transferred to Wuhan to help with the increased body count.

“During the epidemic, they transferred cremation workers from around China to Wuhan keep cremate bodies around the clock,” a Wuhan native with the last name Chen said.

Meanwhile, “a lot of people [are] forming lines today at Hankou Funeral Home” to retrieve the ashes of their loved ones, as the city is finally releasing their remains.

https://www.inquisitr.com/5970405/wuhan-death-toll-47000/
 
someone said that in China huge number of cell phones contracts are not renewed, not sure if it is true
 
Everyone has their own version of truth, usually to suit their own agenda. That goes for China and some of her competing neighbours. China is a draconian Big Brother culture, but that can actually be more effective in treating massive populations. They wouldn't tolerate huge public melas or religious gatherings the like of which we have seen in the subcontinent in last few days.
 
Varun said:
China and the truth? What is this mysterious thing that you speak of?

They can start by admitting to the world that they did this in the first place.
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Yeah China is lying but India defo speaking the truth with their 1000 odd cases :19:
 
PetroDollars said:
Have China ever spoken the truth?

They wouldnt blink an eye to kill 1000s of the own.
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KingKhanWC said:
According to the World Bank, China have lifted 850 million people out of poverty. ITs not as simple as you put it.
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What do the two statements have to do with one another?
 
Syed1 said:
Yeah China is lying but India defo speaking the truth with their 1000 odd cases :19:
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Or both are lying. Just admit it.
 
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I think China is not counting people who died without testing as coronovirus deaths
 
Chaina biggest cities running business without any lockdown while whole world suffering.
I seriously doubt china, the would have medicine. Not possible to bring normal state with out medicine.
 
KingKhanWC said:
You haven't shown any evidence or argument here apart from how is it lower than Italy.

Simple answer is China didn't mess arond, they sealed off the town of Wuhan very quickly. Italy and UK have been clueless, changing policies due to pressure from certain areas.
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China did mess around. It messed around and lied to the whole world. Please do watch this video and keep an open mind. One of the person interviewed has 30 years of experience in pandemics and also helped with the Ebola pandemic. The person was one of the three scientific advisor for the film contagion.


UK and Italy wouldn't be in this position if China hadn't lied. China is the country where doctors disappear for reporting a new disease. Nothing out of China can be trusted and accepted at face value.
 
Dios said:
What do the two statements have to do with one another?
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Simple really, surprised you dont get it. Let me help.

Poster suggested China is happy killing 1000's of it's own people, to which I argued they actually seem to care about their people, lifting them out of poverty.

Its easy to call China a liar but I cant recall China making up stories of WMD's and then using this lie to murder over a million people , destroy a number of nations in the process. Surely we have proof the biggest liars are the US and Brits.
 
Screenshot-2020-04-01-10-27-29-570-com-whatsapp.jpg


:91:
 
China has concealed the extent of the coronavirus outbreak in its country, under-reporting both total cases and deaths it’s suffered from the disease, the U.S. intelligence community concluded in a classified report to the White House, according to three U.S. officials.

The officials asked not to be identified because the report is secret and declined to detail its contents. But the thrust, they said, is that China’s public reporting on cases and deaths is intentionally incomplete. Two of the officials said the report concludes that China’s numbers are fake.

The report was received by the White House last week, one of the officials said.

The outbreak began in China’s Hubei province in late 2019, but the country has publicly reported only about 82,000 cases and 3,300 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. That compares to more than 189,000 cases and more than 4,000 deaths in the U.S., which has the largest publicly reported outbreak in the world.

Communications staff at the White House and Chinese embassy in Washington didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

While China eventually imposed a strict lockdown beyond those of less autocratic nations, there has been considerable skepticism of China’s reported numbers, both outside and within the country. The Chinese government has repeatedly revised its methodology for counting cases, for weeks excluding people without symptoms entirely, and only on Tuesday added more than 1,500 asymptomatic cases to its total.

Stacks of thousands of urns outside funeral homes in Hubei province have driven public doubt in Beijing’s reporting.

Deborah Birx, the State Department immunologist advising the White House on its response to the outbreak, said Tuesday that China’s public reporting influenced assumptions elsewhere in the world about the nature of the virus.

“The medical community made -- interpreted the Chinese data as: This was serious, but smaller than anyone expected,” she said at a news conference on Tuesday. “Because I think probably we were missing a significant amount of the data, now that what we see happened to Italy and see what happened to Spain.”

China is not the only country with suspect public reporting. Western officials have pointed to Iran, Russia, Indonesia and especially North Korea, which has not reported a single case of the disease, as probable under-counts. Others including Saudi Arabia and Egypt may also be playing down their numbers.

U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo has publicly urged China and other nations to be transparent about their outbreaks. He has repeatedly accused China of covering up the extent of the problem and being slow to share information, especially in the weeks after the virus first emerged, and blocking offers of help from American experts.

“This data set matters,” he said at a news conference in Washington on Tuesday. The development of medical therapies and public-health measures to combat the virus “so that we can save lives depends on the ability to have confidence and information about what has actually transpired,” he said.

“I would urge every nation: Do your best to collect the data. Do your best to share that information,” he said. “We’re doing that.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-outbreak-u-s-intelligence-says?sref=SCKvL4TY
 
Pretty obvious that the Chinese are lying through their teeth about the Covid deaths. Not to mention the fact that they sold faulty PPE to Spain, Turkey, Czech & others has annoyed the western powers ( PAkistan should be checking the quality of the Chinese PPE too). There will be reckoning for this after the storm settles down - hope the Chinese get their backyards sued for dragging the world into an abyss.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrap...ng-a-public-relations-disaster-for-china/amp/
 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">China has concealed the extent of the coronavirus outbreak in its country, under-reporting both total cases and deaths it’s suffered from the disease, the U.S. intelligence community concluded in a classified report to the White House <a href="https://t.co/lBmtEwdtE2">https://t.co/lBmtEwdtE2</a></p>— Bloomberg (@business) <a href="https://twitter.com/business/status/1245387419081457664?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 1, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
 
How China unleashed Twitter bots to spread COVID-19 propaganda in Italy

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Moreover, many of the bots were found to spread fake news, such as the video showing Italian citizens chanting “Thank you China” from their windows. The footage was eventually proved faked, and yet it appeared on the Twitter account of the Chinese MFA spox<a href="https://t.co/JdwvmgncKR">https://t.co/JdwvmgncKR</a></p>— Gabriele Carrer (@GabrieleCarrer) <a href="https://twitter.com/GabrieleCarrer/status/1244980797418934272?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 31, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>



An exclusive report by Alkemy for Formiche shows an impressive amount of bots flooded Twitter in March to spread China's COVID-19 propaganda in Italy

Chinese propaganda keeps hitting hard Italy. The Chinese communist party (CCP) mounted a huge campaign on the medical aid and teams sent to Italy in March to help fight the coronavirus. State-media and prominent Chinese political figures worked tirelessly to depict China as Italy’s savior. President Xi Jinping even announced a new “Health Silk Road” with Italy in a phone call with the Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. A move that, many observers and opposition leaders fear, might hand over the Healthcare system’s wireless network to Chinese companies.

On Twitter, the mobilization was a great success, with thousands of posts celebrating Chinese solidarity. Yet, not all of this was created by human hand. Nearly half of the tweets (46,3%) published between March 11 and 23 with the hashtag #forzaCinaeItalia (Go China, go Italy, ed.) and more than one third (37,1%) of those with the hashtag #grazieCina (thank you China, ed.) came from bots, a Social Data Intelligence analysis realized for Formiche by Alkemy SpA’s R&D Lab together with Deweave Luiss Data Lab and Catchy shows.

On March 12th a China Eastern Airbus A-350 departed from Shanghai and landed at Rome. Onboard, there were nine Chinese doctors from Hubei, the region of Wuhan, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak, along with 30 tons of medical supplies. Before and after the arrival of aid from China, the Chinese embassy in Rome’s Twitter account greeted the operation through the hashtag #forzaCinaeItalia and had an unprecedented following.

It is no coincidence, the report reveals processing 47.821 tweets. Figures regarding the Chinese embassy’s Twitter account engagement and the tweets greeting the solidarity mission show a well-thought information operation. Bots were recognized through some specific criteria. Activity: “Selected accounts had an average of more than 50 tweets per day, the most active reaching 91,2 tweets per day”, the researchers wrote. Timezone: accounts tweeted propaganda messages “All-the-day long, with no breaks from night-to-day”. Political affiliation: “All the accounts were favorable to the Chinese intervention”. Handle: “Their nicknames have alphanumeric characters”. Finally, Silence: “Some of the accounts had been silent for long periods”.

Chinese aid was not the only subject of the Twitter eco-chamber. Indeed, the Alkemy analysis shows, many of the tweets related to the hashtags used by bots dealt with EU issues. Some of them used the hashtags #Lagarde (the ECB president, ed.), #EU, #Europe but also #shame, as often Chinese propaganda over the COVID-19 supplies targeted the presumed EU inaction. Moreover, many of the bots were found to spread fake news, such as the video showing Italian citizens chanting “Thank you China” from their windows. The footage was eventually proved faked from many de-bunkers, and yet it appeared on the Twitter account of the Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunyinh.

The massive wave of bots that came into action to spread propaganda over the Chinese supplies in Italy shows a well-directed operation. And, it seems to confirm the suspects of the Italian Parliament’s Intelligence committee (COPASIR), which recently raised an alarm for a wide disinformation campaign on coronavirus led by foreign actors.

https://formiche.net/2020/03/china-unleashed-twitter-bots-covid19-propaganda-italy/
 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Tucker Carlson is currently citing a report that he openly admits he can't confirm is true to question if coronavirus was made in a lab <a href="https://t.co/CTxrJtw0Sh">pic.twitter.com/CTxrJtw0Sh</a></p>— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) <a href="https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1245143177037787141?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 1, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
 
PetroDollars said:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Tucker Carlson is currently citing a report that he openly admits he can't confirm is true to question if coronavirus was made in a lab <a href="https://t.co/CTxrJtw0Sh">pic.twitter.com/CTxrJtw0Sh</a></p>— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) <a href="https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1245143177037787141?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 1, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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Here we go Fox News has found its new boogeyman. They will blame China until the cows come home while ignoring how incompetent the federal governments response has been and how they failed to look at pandemics as a real threat.
 
sjahmed23 said:
Here we go Fox News has found its new boogeyman. They will blame China until the cows come home while ignoring how incompetent the federal governments response has been and how they failed to look at pandemics as a real threat.
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Its from a Chinese report, but how can you blame the incompetence of the federal gov. they were going by the lies given by China and WHO and didnt see the threat till they saw it with there own eyes, clearly this was a bio weapon.
 
PetroDollars said:
Its from a Chinese report, but how can you blame the incompetence of the federal gov. they were going by the lies given by China and WHO and didnt see the threat till they saw it with there own eyes, clearly this was a bio weapon.
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There were several reports that came out even by intelligence agencies that spoke about the pandemic back in January and December, Trump failed to act on it, best thing he could think of was a Travel ban which makes his base very happy. Him and his team had no contingency plan, everybody and their mom knew this virus was going to spread and we didn't even have a proper test kit until it was too late. This failure was detrimental and we're still reacting to virus (shut down orders AFTER hospitals are overloaded, not enacting defense production act so states would stop outbidding each other for critical resources and the list goes on) The federal govt under trump is ABSENT and totally frozen by what is going on. We will not get out of this mess for 3-4 months if we keep going at this pace.

Don't compare us to Europe, erurope is too interconnected for any mitigation if the virus spreads in one country.

I still don't understand why they were so against people using masks when it's one of the best preventative methods against this disease. The federal govt, cdc, fda have been a total flop. I don't even want to believe anything these people say.
 
sjahmed23 said:
There were several reports that came out even by intelligence agencies that spoke about the pandemic back in January and December, Trump failed to act on it, best thing he could think of was a Travel ban which makes his base very happy. Him and his team had no contingency plan, everybody and their mom knew this virus was going to spread and we didn't even have a proper test kit until it was too late. This failure was detrimental and we're still reacting to virus (shut down orders AFTER hospitals are overloaded, not enacting defense production act so states would stop outbidding each other for critical resources and the list goes on) The federal govt under trump is ABSENT and totally frozen by what is going on. We will not get out of this mess for 3-4 months if we keep going at this pace.

Don't compare us to Europe, erurope is too interconnected for any mitigation if the virus spreads in one country.

I still don't understand why they were so against people using masks when it's one of the best preventative methods against this disease. The federal govt, cdc, fda have been a total flop. I don't even want to believe anything these people say.
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Culturally I think we never ever wore masks except for international students so I think even if you give them masks I don't think people would have wore em
 
Bigboii said:
Culturally I think we never ever wore masks except for international students so I think even if you give them masks I don't think people would have wore em
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But we will suffer because of it
 
Trump says China's coronavirus numbers seem 'on the light side'

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday the coronavirus statistics China was reporting seemed “a little bit on the light side,” while his national security adviser said Washington had no way of knowing if Beijing’s figures were accurate.

The comments came after a senior Republican lawmaker cast doubt on Beijing’s data and Bloomberg News said a classified U.S. intelligence report had concluded that China had under-reported the total cases and deaths it had suffered.

The coronavirus outbreak began in China in late 2019 but Beijing has reported fewer cases and deaths than in the United States, which now has the world’s largest outbreak, with 214,000 confirmed cases and 4,800 deaths. [L1N2BP1DH]

Trump told a daily briefing by his coronavirus task force that he had not received an intelligence report on China’s data, but added:

“The numbers seem to be a little bit on the light side - and I am being nice when I say that - relative to what we witnessed and what was reported.”

Trump said he had discussed how China had dealt with the coronavirus outbreak in a phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping last Friday, but “not so much the numbers”.

Trump, who has toned down his criticism of China’s handling of the virus outbreak since the call, also said the U.S. relationship with China was “very good” and both sides wanted to maintain a multi-billion dollar trade deal reached earlier this year.

“As to whether or not their numbers are accurate,” he added, “I am not an accountant from China.”

Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying reiterated during a daily briefing in Beijing on Thursday that China has been open and transparent about the coronavirus epidemic in the country and sharply criticised U.S. officials who cast doubt on China’s disclosures.

“These comments by those U.S. politicians are just shameless and morally repulsive,” she said. “They should abandon such politicising of public health issues. This is just immoral and inhuman – and will be denounced by people all around the world.”

Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, told the same briefing Washington was “just not (in) the position to confirm any of the numbers that are coming out of China.”

“There’s lots of public reporting on whether the numbers are too low,” he said. “You got access to those reports that are coming out of Chinese social media...we just have no way to confirm any of those numbers.

Earlier, Michael McCaul, the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, accused Beijing of hiding the true number of those impacted. He said he had called for the State Department to investigate Beijing’s “initial cover up and subsequent actions regarding this pandemic.”

The Bloomberg report cited unidentified U.S. officials as saying that a classified report, received by the White House last week, concluded that China’s public reporting on cases and deaths was intentionally incomplete.

China reported dwindling new infections on Wednesday and for the first time disclosed the number of cases of people who have the highly contagious disease but do not show symptoms.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...-numbers-seem-on-the-light-side-idUSKBN21K0AK
 
sjahmed23 said:
There were several reports that came out even by intelligence agencies that spoke about the pandemic back in January and December, Trump failed to act on it, best thing he could think of was a Travel ban which makes his base very happy. Him and his team had no contingency plan, everybody and their mom knew this virus was going to spread and we didn't even have a proper test kit until it was too late. This failure was detrimental and we're still reacting to virus (shut down orders AFTER hospitals are overloaded, not enacting defense production act so states would stop outbidding each other for critical resources and the list goes on) The federal govt under trump is ABSENT and totally frozen by what is going on. We will not get out of this mess for 3-4 months if we keep going at this pace.

Don't compare us to Europe, erurope is too interconnected for any mitigation if the virus spreads in one country.

I still don't understand why they were so against people using masks when it's one of the best preventative methods against this disease. The federal govt, cdc, fda have been a total flop. I don't even want to believe anything these people say.
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Chiense lies were backed up by WHO, the gov. of both US and Europe acted based on advice by WHO, masks being infected also came from WHO and not a federal gov.

It doesn't matter if it was trump in power or obama the result would have always been the same as they were all decived and thats why the whole western world is facing the same level of pandemic whether its europe or US.
 
China Covid: Angry protests at giant iPhone factory in Zhengzhou

Protests have erupted at the world's biggest iPhone factory in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou, according to footage circulated widely online.

Videos show hundreds of workers marching, with some confronted by people in hazmat suits and riot police.

Those livestreaming the protests said workers were beaten by police. Videos also showed clashes.

Manufacturer Foxconn said it would work with staff and local government to prevent further violence.

In its statement, the firm said some workers had doubts about pay but that the firm would fulfil pay based on contracts.

It also described as "patently untrue" rumours that new recruits were being asked to share dormitories with workers who were Covid-positive.

Dormitories were disinfected and checked by local officials before new people moved in, Foxconn said.

Last month, rising Covid cases saw the site locked down, prompting some workers to break out and go home. The company then recruited new workers with the promise of generous bonuses.

Footage shared on a livestreaming site showed workers shouting: "Defend our rights! Defend our rights!"

Other workers were seen smashing surveillance cameras and windows with sticks.

"They changed the contract so that we could not get the subsidy as they had promised. They quarantine us but don't provide food," said one Foxconn worker during his live stream.

"If they do not address our needs, we will keep fighting."

He also claimed to have seen a man "severely injured" after a beating from police.

One employee who recently started working at the Zhengzhou plant also told the BBC workers were protesting because Foxconn had "changed the contract they promised".

He said some newly recruited workers feared getting Covid from staff who had been there during the earlier outbreak.

"Those workers who are protesting are wanting to get a subsidy and return home," the staff member said.

There was a heavy police deployment to the plant on Wednesday morning, he said. Other livestreamed videos also showed crowds of armed police at the site.

Another newly recruited employee told the BBC he visited the protest scene on Wednesday where he saw "one man with blood over his head lying on the ground".

"I didn't know the exact reason why people are protesting but they are mixing us new workers with old workers who were [Covid] positive," he told the BBC.

Foxconn, a Taiwanese firm, is Apple's main subcontractor and its Zhengzhou plant assembles more iPhones than anywhere else in the world.

In late October many workers fled the plant amid rising Covid cases and allegations of poor treatment of staff.

Their escape was captured on social media as they rode lorries back to their hometowns elsewhere in the central Chinese province.

The firm has since enacted so-called closed loop operations at the plant - keeping it isolated from the wider city of Zhengzhou because of a Covid outbreak there.

Earlier this month Apple said it expected lower shipments of iPhone 14 models because of the disruption to production in Zhengzhou.

BBC
 
Chinese state media have given huge attention to the World Cup this week, but the matches are fuelling frustrations that people in the country are being left out of the celebrations.

On top of China's men's national team not qualifying for the event, scenes of maskless celebrations and raucous gatherings in Qatar have irritated viewers, who have been discouraged from gathering to watch the games.

Many have used the World Cup to complain online about China's existing strategies. The country maintains a zero-Covid policy, where entire communities are locked down over single cases of the virus, in order to prevent it from spreading.

China is currently experiencing its worst outbreak in six months, and localised lockdowns have surged over the last couple of weeks. In the past 24 hours, China has recorded more than 28,000 new cases; these are in every single provincial-level region.

Football is very popular in China. President Xi Jinping is known for being a lover of the sport, and he has spoken previously of it being a dream for the country to win the World Cup .

As a result, matches are being shown on national broadcaster CCTV, and state media have sought to amplify China's "presence". The Global Times has reported on how China-made products "ranging from buses to the [Lusail] stadium, and even air conditioning units are well represented at the event".

Leading outlets such as CCTV have also promoted the presence of Chinese flagbearers at the opening ceremony, and how two giant pandas arrived in Qatar to "meet" visitors arriving for the event.

But it is evident that Covid-19 has put a damper on the celebrations. In major cities, outbreaks have resulted in non-essential businesses once again closing, and people being urged to limit their movements.

How Covid is rising again in China
With no bars to go to, the Global Times newspaper says some fans are "choosing to watch the games at home with their families". Others have also reportedly taken to camping sites.

Flights between Qatar and China also remain severely limited for those hoping to watch the event in person.

This was the scene in a sparsely filled pub in Shanghai for the opening ceremony of the tournament
Many are feeling acute isolation watching this year's event.

'On the same planet'?

An open letter questioning the country's continued zero-Covid policies and asking if China was "on the same planet" as Qatar quickly spread on mobile messenger WeChat on Tuesday, before being censored.

Comments on the Twitter-like Weibo social network are rife from viewers who speak about how watching this year's matches is making them feel divided from the rest of the world.

Some speak of their perception that it is "weird" to see hundreds of thousands of people gathering, without wearing masks or needing to show evidence of a recent Covid-19 test. "There are no separate seats so people can maintain social distance, and there is nobody dressed in white and blue [medical] garb on the sidelines. This planet has become really divided."

"On one side of the world, there is the carnival that is the World Cup, on the other are rules not to visit public places for five days," one says.

Some say they have had difficulty explaining to their children why the scenes from the World Cup are so different to those people face at home.

There are many in China, though, who have been critical of countries overseas opening up while the World Health Organization still calls the Covid-19 virus an "acute global emergency".

However, there is no end in sight to China's existing measures. This week, the National Health Commission spokesman "warned against any slacking in epidemic prevention and control" and urged "more resolute and decisive measures" to bring cases under control.

Local governments in major cities have reintroduced mass testing and travel restrictions and ultimately delivered a message that people should try to stay at home.

But after three years of such measures, people are frustrated, resulting in protests in the last month in both the cities of Guangzhou and Zhengzhou.

BBC
 
CHINA’S DAILY COVID CASES HIGHEST SINCE PANDEMIC BEGAN

China’s daily Covid cases have climbed to the highest since the pandemic began, official data showed Thursday, despite the government persisting with a zero-tolerance approach involving gruelling lockdowns and travel restrictions.

The numbers are relatively small when compared with China’s vast population of 1.4 billion and the caseloads seen in Western countries at the height of the pandemic.

But under Beijing’s strict zero-Covid policy, even small outbreaks can shut down entire cities and place contacts of infected patients into strict quarantine.

The country recorded 31,454 domestic cases — 27,517 without symptoms — on Wednesday, the National Health Bureau said.

The unrelenting zero-Covid push has caused fatigue and resentment among swathes of the population as the pandemic’s third anniversary approaches, sparking sporadic protests and hitting productivity in the world’s second-largest economy.

On Wednesday, violent protests erupted at Foxconn’s vast iPhone factory in central China, with video showing dozens of hazmat-clad personnel wielding batons and chasing employees.

The latest figures exceed the 29,390 infections recorded in mid-April when megacity Shanghai was under lockdown, with residents struggling to buy food and access medical care.

Several cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chongqing have tightened Covid restrictions as cases surge.

The capital now requires a negative PCR test result within 48 hours for those seeking to enter public places such as shopping malls, hotels and government buildings, Beijing authorities said. Schools across the city have moved to online classes.

The southern manufacturing hub of Guangzhou — where nearly a third of the latest Covid cases were found — has built thousands of temporary hospital rooms to accommodate patients.

– ‘Bumpy’ reopening –
A series of new rules announced by the central government earlier this month appeared to signal a shift away from zero-Covid, easing quarantine requirements for entering the country and simplifying a system for designating high-risk areas.

But China has yet to approve more effective mRNA vaccines for public use and only 85 percent of adults over 60 had received two doses of domestic vaccines by mid-August, according to health authorities.

And Shijiazhuang, a city neighbouring Beijing that was seen as a pilot for testing reopening strategies, reversed most of its easing measures this week.

“The path to reopening may be slow, costly and bumpy,” Ting Lu, chief China economist at Nomura, said in a note.

“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.”

ARY
 
People are tired of covid. 99% has moved on and realised this has been blown up by the media/governments.
 
China's widening COVID-19 curbs trigger public pushback

BEIJING, Nov 25 (Reuters) - Frustration simmered on Friday among residents and business groups in China navigating stricter COVID-19 control curbs as the country reported another record high of daily infections just weeks after hopes had been raised of easing measures.

The resurgence of COVID cases in China, with 32,695 new local infections recorded for Thursday as numerous cities report outbreaks, has prompted widespread lockdowns and other curbs on movement and business, as well as pushback.

China's COVID response is taking a mounting toll on the world's second-largest economy, and on Friday its central bank made a widely-anticipated move of support, cutting the amount of cash that banks must hold as reserves. This releases 500 billion yuan ($69.8 billion) in long-term liquidity.

The French Chamber of Commerce in China urged authorities to properly implement COVID "optimisation" measures announced two weeks ago, in a statement shared extensively on social media after the French embassy posted it on its Twitter-like Weibo account on Thursday.

The 20 measures, which include shortened quarantines and other more targeted steps, had "given hope" to French companies for more bilateral trade and economic exchanges, but "good policies also need to be implemented in a uniform manner and without adding layers of other contradicting policies", the chamber's statement said.

The announcement of the 20 measures, just as rising cases prompted an increasingly heavy response under China's strict zero-COVID approach, has caused widespread confusion and uncertainty in big cities, including Beijing, where many residents are locked down at home.

'DRACONIAN APPROACH'

China defends President Xi Jinping's signature zero-COVID policy as life-saving and necessary to prevent overwhelming the healthcare system.

Many analysts expect a significant easing of the coronavirus curbs only from next March or April at the earliest, with some experts warning that China must significantly ramp up vaccinations and change its messaging in a country where fear of COVID runs high.

A move towards living with COVID in the medium-term would be difficult, said Singapore-based ING economist Rob Carnell.

"Once you start to move away from the really draconian approach, then this thing just spirals quickly," he said.

"I'm not sure still that they are willing to take that hit," he said, referring to large numbers of people getting sick or dying. "And until they are, they're going to be struggling with this."

At the world's largest iPhone factory in the central city of Zhengzhou, more than 20,000 new hires have left after COVID-related worker unrest this week, further imperilling output at Apple supplier Foxconn's plant there, Reuters reported.

References to a speech by a man in the southwestern city of Chongqing who called for the government to admit its mistakes on COVID were shared widely on Chinese social media.

"Give me liberty or death," the bespectacled man told onlooking residents in an impassioned speech on Thursday, according to videos seen by Reuters.

"There is only one disease in the world and that is being both poor and not having freedom," he added. "We have now got both. We're still struggling and suffering over a little cold."

The man was later seen being bundled towards a police car by security personnel, prompting angry shouts from onlookers.

Hashtags related to the man, who netizens have called "Chongqing's superman brother" or "Chongqing hero", were censored on Friday. But individual users continued to show support by posting subtle messages or cartoon pictures of him.

ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES?

As lockdowns afflict more people, some are proposing alternative approaches. In Beijing, residents of some compounds shared on WeChat proposals for how infected neighbours could quarantine at home if they did not display serious symptoms.

It's not clear whether such initiatives would succeed.

Notices listing the circumstances under which health workers may remove a person from their home, aimed at educating people of their rights if asked to be taken to a quarantine centre, were also circulated online.

Oxford Economics senior economist Louise Loo said that reports of public dissatisfaction across provinces in partial or full lockdowns have gained momentum, as was the case during the last big outbreak in April, although these "don't yet reflect large-scale collective action".

"As before, we expect officials to be able to respond swiftly to stem the social risk of escalating protests, either through a combination of heavier-handed information controls or with piecemeal easing of restrictions," Loo wrote.

Although the April outbreak was concentrated in Shanghai, case clusters this time are numerous and far-flung.

The southern city of Guangzhou and southwestern Chongqing have recorded the bulk of cases, while cities including Chengdu, Jinan, Lanzhou, Xian and Wuhan logged hundreds of new infections daily. Beijing reported 1,860 cases for Thursday.

In the east, Nanjing in Jiangsu province said it would conduct mass testing for five straight days from Saturday, the latest city to announce such plans.

Reuters
 
Protests erupt in Xinjiang and Beijing after deadly fire

Nov 26 (Reuters) - Public anger in China towards 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.

Crowds took to the streets on Friday night in Xinjiang's capital of Urumqi, chanting "End the lockdown!" and pumping their fists in the air, after a deadly fire on Thursday triggered anger over their prolonged COVID-19 lockdown according to videos circulated on Chinese social media on Friday night.

Videos showed people in a plaza singing China's national anthem with its lyric, "Rise up, those who refuse to be slaves!" while others shouted that they wanted to be released from lockdowns.

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.

In the capital of Beijing 2,700 km (1,678 miles) away, some residents under lockdown staged small-scale protests or confronted their local officials over movement restrictions placed on them, with some successfully pressuring them into lifting them ahead of a schedule.

A crucial spark for the public anger was a fire in a high-rise building in Urumqi that killed 10 on Thursday night, whose case went viral on social media as many internet users surmised that residents could not escape in time because the building was partially locked down.

Urumqi officials abruptly held a news conference in the early hours of Saturday to deny COVID measures had hampered escape and rescue, but internet users continued to question the official narrative.

"The Urumqi fire got everyone in the country upset," said Sean Li, a resident in Beijing.

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.

The residents had caught wind of the plan after seeing workers putting barriers on their gates. "That tragedy could have happened to any of us," he said.

By Saturday evening, at least ten other compounds lifted lockdown before the announced end-date after residents complained, according to a Reuters tally of social media posts by residents.

A separate video shared with Reuters showed Beijing residents in an unidentifiable part of the city marching around an open-air carpark on Saturday, shouting "End the lockdown".

The Beijing government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.

ASKING TOUGH QUESTIONS

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.

"During the first two years of COVID, people trusted the government to make the best decisions to keep them safe from the virus. Now people are increasingly asking tough questions and are wary about following orders," Yang said.

Xinjiang is home to 10 million Uyghurs. Rights groups and Western governments have long accused Beijing of abuses against the mainly Muslim ethnic minority, including forced labour in internment camps. China strongly rejects such claims.

China defends President Xi Jinping's signature zero-COVID policy as life-saving and necessary to prevent overwhelming the healthcare system. Officials have vowed to continue with it despite the growing public pushback and its mounting toll on the world's second-biggest economy.

China said on Friday it would cut the amount of cash that banks must hold as reserves for the second time this year, releasing liquidity to prop up a faltering economy.

The next few weeks could be the worst in China since the early weeks of the pandemic both for the economy and the healthcare system, Mark Williams of Capital Economics said in note this week, as efforts to contain the current outbreak will require additional localised lockdowns in many cities, which will further depress economic activity.

For Friday, the country recorded 34,909 daily local cases, low by global standards but the third record in a row, with infections spreading numerous cities, prompting widespread lockdowns and other curbs on movement and business.

Shanghai, China's most populous city and financial hub which endured a two month lockdown earlier this year, tightened testing requirements on Saturday for entering cultural venues such as museums and libraries, requiring people to present a negative COVID test taken within 48 hours, down from 72 hours earlier.

Reuters
 
Protests against Covid restrictions in China appear to have intensified following a fire which killed 10 people in an apartment block in Urumqi.

In the city of Shanghai, videos posted on social media by foreign journalists show thousands of people taking to the streets to remember the victims and to protest against Covid restrictions.

Hundreds were heard asking for President Xi Jinping to resign.

Many people have blamed the lockdown of residential buildings for the fire.

Chinese authorities have denied it was the cause. Though Urumqi authorities did issue an unusual apology late on Friday - vowing to punish anyone who had deserted their duty.

At the gathering in Shanghai, some people were seen lighting candles and laying flowers for the victims.

Others were heard shouting slogans such as "Xi Jinping, step down" and "Communist party, step down". Some also held blank white banners.

Such demands are an unusual sight within China, where any direct criticism of the government and the president can result in harsh penalties.

Some protesters also shouted abuse at police, who lined the streets where people had gathered.

One protester told the Associated Press news agency one of his friends had been beaten by police at the scene, while two others had been pepper sprayed. Videos of other parts of the protest showed police standing watch as people protested.

BBC
 
Over the years, sudden, local explosions of defiance have been triggered by a range of issues - from toxic pollution to illegal land grabs, or the mistreatment of a community member at the hands of the police.

But this time it's different.

There is one subject at the forefront of Chinese people's minds, and many are increasingly fed up with it - prompting widespread pushback against the government's zero-Covid restrictions.

This has come in the form of residents smashing down barriers designed to enforce social distancing, and now large street protests in cities and university campuses across the country.

In a way, it is hard to explain just how shocking it is to hear a crowd in Shanghai calling for China's leader Xi Jinping to resign.

It is extremely dangerous here to publicly criticise the Communist Party's general secretary. You risk being put in prison.

And yet there they were on the Shanghai street (Wulumuqi Lu) which carries the name of the Xinjiang city where a fire had killed 10 residents, and zero-Covid restrictions were blamed for hampering the rescue effort.

One protester calls out: "Xi Jinping!"

And hundreds reply: "Step down!"

Again and again: "Xi Jinping! Step down! Xi Jinping! Step down!"

The chant also went out: "Communist Party! Step down! Communist Party! Step down!"

For a political organisation with no greater priority than remaining in power, this is as big a challenge as they come.

The government appears to have drastically underestimated growing discontent towards the zero-Covid approach - a policy inextricably linked to Mr Xi, who recently pledged there would be no swerving from the policy.

What's more, there is no easy way out of the corner the Party appears to have painted itself into.

It has had three years to prepare for an eventual reopening, but instead of building more hospital ICU units and emphasising the need for vaccinations, it has poured enormous resources into mass testing, lockdown and isolation facilities designed to win a war against a virus which is never going away.
 
In China's Wuhan, Where Covid Outbreak Began, Hundreds Protest On Streets

Beijing: Hundreds of people protested in Wuhan in central China on Sunday, livestreams showed, as demonstrations against the country's strict zero-Covid policy broke out across the country.

Footage geolocated by AFP to a street in the centre of the city -- where Covid-19 first emerged in 2019 -- showed people gathered at night, cheering and recording the protest on their mobile phones.

NDTV
 
Protests against stringent COVID restrictions have intensified across China - as a British journalist was seen being beaten and kicked by police.

Demonstrators and police clashed in Shanghai on Sunday night, despite being forcibly removed by police using pepper spray only a few hours earlier.

On Sunday night, the BBC said one of its journalists, Ed Lawrence, was working as an "accredited journalist" when he was "beaten and kicked by police" while covering the protests.

Footage on social media showed him being dragged to the ground in cuffs, while in another video, he was seen saying: "Call the consulate now."

According to officials, Mr Lawrence was arrested "for his own good" in case he caught coronavirus from the crowd, but the BBC said it was "extremely concerned" about his treatment and added: "We do not consider this a credible explanation."

A Sky News team in Shanghai had witnessed police moving quickly and decisively, pushing protesters to try to disperse them but the crowd did not leave.

They also saw several people on the streets of Shanghai being arrested by police on Monday morning.

Meanwhile, protest against President Xi Jinping's zero-COVID lockdown policy has spread outside the Far East, with between 100 and 300 people gathering outside the Chinese Embassy in London.

A woman from a group called China Deviants told Sky News they had decided to voice their anger against President Xi's regime because "people in China are being oppressed".

She added: "We have been oppressed for years, for decades, and we want to change that. We need to stand up against this authoritarian regime."

She said, like many of her fellow countrymen and women in China, their anger had boiled over after a fire in the city of Urumqi on Thursday which killed at least 10 people.

The city has been under harsh lockdowns for more than three months to combat the spread of the coronavirus under China's "zero-COVID" policy.

Read more:
The 'green code' app: How China's Zero COVID policy is turning cities, parks, restaurants and shops into digitised fortresses

Videos on social media had showed an arc of water from a distant fire truck falling short of the fire, sparking waves of angry comments online. Some said fire engines had been blocked by pandemic control barriers or by cars stranded after their owners were put in quarantine, but this has not been verified.

The woman, who covered her face for fear of punishment, said: "It sparked rage. We stand up to raise voices for those people. We stand for justice.

"We want to speak, and we want people to hear it."

China Deviants is a non-profit group and is calling for others to join them to "reject dictatorship".

A statement from the group said: "We are committed to awakening the Chinese people against the dictator, letting the Chinese people and the international community realise that: a non-elected government cannot represent the voice of the Chinese people.

"We need democracy and freedom, and we reject dictatorship."

As protesters returned to Shanghai, Amnesty International described their move as one of "remarkable bravery".

SKY
 
Two sides to the coin......

Hundreds of people protesting at various chinese cities shouldn't be a big deal considering the size of China and it's population.

That said it's happening at all is shocking considering the strict controls in the communist state, especially the fact that there's open sloganeering against Xi.

I think China has the tools to successfully crush these protests, that said if the revolution really hits the ground running in China, it will be like nothing we have seen before. CCP will try to nip this in the bud as early as possible, with the gargantuan state machinery at play it should be able to do it without prolonging this any longer.
 
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So often one item comes to symbolise an entire protest movement. In China, that item is a humble piece of blank paper.

As dusk fell on Shanghai on Sunday evening, some of those who gathered at a vigil to remember the victims of a fire that catalysed the demonstrations came clutching sheets of paper.

Similarly, in the capital Beijing, protesters came armed with scraps of paper to a demonstration at Beijing's prestigious Tsinghua University, once attended by President Xi Jinping.

And in another striking video a young woman could be seen walking through the streets of Wuzhen - a town in the eastern province of Zhejiang - with chains around her wrists and duct tape over her mouth. In her hands was a sheet of unspoiled blank paper.

The trend has its roots in the 2020 Hong Kong demonstrations, where locals held blank pieces of paper to protest against the city's draconian new national security laws.

Activists held the paper aloft after authorities banned slogans and phrases associated with the mass protest movement of 2019 that saw the city grind to a halt and officials violently clamp down on demonstrators.

Some have argued that the gesture is not only a statement about the silencing of dissent, but also a challenge to authorities, as if to say 'are you going to arrest me for holding a sign saying nothing?'"

"There was definitely nothing on the paper, but we know what's on there," a woman who joined protests in Shanghai told the BBC.
 
China Covid: Police clamp down after days of protests

China's protests against Covid restrictions which erupted over the weekend appear to have died down, as authorities begin clamping down.

A heavy police presence has been reported in several cities, and some gatherings were quelled or failed to materialise.

Reports have emerged of people being questioned and their phones searched.

But overseas Chinese have continued protesting, in at least a dozen cities across the world.

Last weekend's demonstrations had grown after a fire in a high-rise block in Urumqi, western China, killed 10 people on Thursday.

It is widely believed residents could not escape the blaze because of Covid restrictions, but local authorities have disputed this.

As a result, thousands took to the streets for days, demanding an end to Covid lockdowns - with some even making rare calls for President Xi Jinping to stand down.

But on Monday, planned protests in Beijing did not happen after officers surrounded the assembly point. In Shanghai, large barriers were erected along the main protest route and police made several arrests.

On Tuesday morning, police could be seen in both cities patrolling areas where some groups on the Telegram social media app had suggested people should gather again.

A small protest in the southern city of Hangzhou on Monday night was also quickly stopped with people swiftly arrested, according to social media footage verified by the BBC.

But in Hong Kong, dozens of protesters gathered in the centre of the city and at the campus of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, in a show of solidarity with demonstrators in mainland China.

Many also gathered outside Chinese embassies in major cities around the world like London, Paris and Tokyo, and universities in the US and Europe.

One expert suggested that local protests were not likely to die down any time soon, saying they were likely to "ebb and flow" because people were "not being called out to the streets in a controlled fashion... they move between social media and the street".

But Drew Thompson, a visiting senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore, added that it was also important to note that Chinese police had "tremendous capacity... [and] the ability of China to control these protests going forward... is quite high".

Reports also claim that police were stopping people and searching their homes to check if they had virtual private networks (VPNs) set up, as well as apps like Telegram and Twitter which are banned in China.

One woman told news agency AFP that she and five of her friends who attended a protest in Beijing had received phone calls from police, demanding information about their whereabouts.

In one case, a police officer visited her friend's home after they failed to answer their phone, and asked whether they had visited the protest site, stressing that it was an "illegal assembly".

It is unclear how police might have discovered the identities of those in attendance.

Police have also detained journalists covering the protests in recent days. News agency Reuters said one of its journalists was briefly detained on Sunday before being released.

BBC journalist Ed Lawrence was also held for several hours while covering a protest in Shanghai on the same night. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said his detention was "shocking and unacceptable", adding that Britain would raise concerns with China about its response to the protests.

Censorship has gone into overdrive on Chinese social media platforms since the weekend's protests, to stop people seeing and discussing them.

Tens of millions of posts have been filtered from search results, while media are muting their coverage of Covid in favour of upbeat stories about the World Cup and China's space achievements.

It's a vastly different scene on Western social media platforms, which some Chinese people have taken to to share information including advice for protesters to avoid arrest.

One account on Instagram - a platform which is blocked in China and accessible only through a VPN - published a "safety guide for friends in Shanghai and across the country" and included tips like wearing dark coloured clothing for anonymity and bringing along goggles and water in the event that tear gas is fired.

The Chinese government has not acknowledged the protests or responded in any formal way.

BBC
 
People in China who attended weekend protests against Covid restrictions say they have been contacted by police, as authorities begin clamping down.

Several people in Beijing said police had called demanding information about their whereabouts.

It is unclear how police might have discovered their identities.

On Tuesday officials renewed a promise to speed up efforts to vaccinate older people. Vaccination rates among elderly people are relatively low.

China has recorded record numbers of new cases in recent days.

Over the weekend, thousands in China took to the streets demanding an end to Covid lockdowns - with some even making rare calls for President Xi Jinping to stand down.

But on Monday, planned protests in Beijing did not happen after officers surrounded the assembly point. In Shanghai, large barriers were erected along the main protest route and police made several arrests.

The demonstrations began after a fire in a high-rise block in Urumqi, western China, killed 10 people on Thursday. Many Chinese believe Covid restrictions contributed to the deaths, although the authorities deny this.

Asked whether the protests would prompt a change to zero-Covid rules, an official said China would continue to "fine tune and modify" its measures.

"We are going to maintain and control the negative impact to people's livelihoods and lives," said Mi Feng, a National Health Commission spokesman, at a press conference.

On Tuesday morning, police could be seen in both Beijing and Shanghai patrolling areas where some groups on the Telegram messaging app had suggested people should gather again.

A small protest in the southern city of Hangzhou on Monday night was also quickly stopped with people swiftly arrested, according to social media footage verified by the BBC.

Reports also say that police were stopping people and searching their phones to check if they had virtual private networks (VPNs) set up, as well as apps such as Telegram and Twitter which are blocked in China.

One woman told news agency AFP that she and five of her friends who attended a protest in Beijing had received phone calls from police.

In one case, a police officer visited her friend's home after they failed to answer their phone and asked whether they had visited the protest site, stressing that it was an "illegal assembly".

Another told Reuters that they were asked to show up at a police station to deliver a written record of their activities on Sunday night.

"We are all desperately deleting our chat history," one Beijing protester told Reuters. "Police came to check the ID of one of my friends and then took her away. A few hours later they released her."

Police have also detained journalists covering the protests in recent days. News agency Reuters said one of its journalists was briefly detained on Sunday before being released.

BBC journalist Ed Lawrence was also held for several hours while covering a protest in Shanghai on the same night. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said his detention was "shocking and unacceptable", adding that Britain would raise concerns with China about its response to the protests.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-63785351
 
Protests in Iran and China.

I wonder if these are being sponsored by external forces (CIA or whatever).
 
Chinese authorities seek out COVID protesters

BEIJING, Nov 29 (Reuters) - Chinese authorities have begun inquiries into some of the people who gathered at weekend protests against COVID-19 curbs, people who were at the Beijing demonstrations told Reuters, as police remained out in numbers on the city's streets.

Two protesters told Reuters that callers identifying themselves as Beijing police officers asked them to report to a police station on Tuesday with written accounts of their activities on Sunday night. A student also said they were asked by their college if they had been in an area where a protest happened and to provide a written account.

"We are all desperately deleting our chat history," said another person who witnessed the Beijing protest and declined to be identified. The person said police asked how they heard about the protest and what was their motive for going.

It was not clear how authorities identified the people they wanted to question about their participation in the protests, and it was also not clear how many such people the authorities aimed to question.

Beijing's Public Security Bureau did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for China's foreign ministry said rights and freedoms must be exercised within the framework of the law.

Simmering discontent with stringent COVID prevention policies three years into the pandemic ignited into protests in cities thousands of miles apart over the weekend.

Mainland China's biggest wave of civil disobedience since President Xi Jinping took power a decade ago comes as the number of COVID cases hit record daily highs and large parts of several cities face new lockdowns.

A health official said complaints about COVID controls were mainly about their inflexible implementation.

"The problems highlighted by the public are not aimed at the epidemic prevention and control itself, but focus on simplifying prevention and control measures," Cheng Youquan told reporters, adding that authorities would address urgent concerns.

Officials in the southern economic powerhouse of Guangdong announced on Tuesday night that they would allow close contacts of COVID cases to quarantine at home after health authorities called for more targeted measures.

COVID has spread despite China largely isolating itself from the world and demanding significant sacrifices from its population to comply with frequent testing and prolonged isolation.

The lockdowns have exacerbated one of the sharpest slowdowns in growth China has suffered in decades, disrupting global supply chains and roiling financial markets.

Chinese stocks and the yuan rallied as investors bet signs of civil discontent could prompt an easing of the curbs and cheered a relaxation of regulations on developer fundraising.

China's bluechip index CSI300 (.CSI300) rose 3% for its best session in three weeks, the Shanghai Composite Index (.SSEC) gained 2.3% to hit a two-month high and Hong Kong's Hang Seng (.HSI) shot up by 5%.

Plans to boost the vaccination rate among the elderly also helped lift market sentiment.

'LIFT LOCKDOWN'

Video obtained by Reuters on Tuesday showed protesters in the eastern city of Jinan scuffling with police in hazmat suits and chanting "lift lockdown" as they tried to push through barricades. Reuters was able to confirm the location in the city's Lixia district from the buildings and road layout.

In Hangzhou, the capital of the eastern Zhejiang province, videos on social media which Reuters could not independently verify showed hundreds of police occupying a large square on Monday night, preventing people from congregating.

One video showed police, surrounded by a small crowd of people holding smartphones, making an arrest while others tried to pull back the person being detained.

Hangzhou police did not immediately comment.

In Shanghai and Beijing, police were patrolling areas where some groups on the Telegram messaging service had suggested people gather again. The police presence on Monday night ensured no gatherings took place.

"It's really scary," said Beijing resident Philip Qin, 22, referring to the large number of police on the streets.

Residents said police have been asking people passing through those areas for their phones to check if they had virtual private networks (VPNs) and the Telegram app, which has been used by protesters, residents said. VPNs are illegal for most people in China, while the Telegram app is blocked from China's internet.

Some protesters had used dating apps to evade censorship and police scrutiny.

The spark for the protests was a fire last week in the western city of Urumqi that authorities said killed 10 people.

Some internet users said COVID lockdown measures hampered the effort to rescue people in the burning building. Officials have denied that.

'FOREIGN FORCES'

Prominent nationalist bloggers, such as Ren Yi, the grandson of Communist Party leader Ren Zhongyi, and Yu Li, who uses the pen name Sima Nan, wrote that the protests were fomented by "foreign forces".

"What is their purpose? On one hand it is to intensify internal conflicts. On the other hand, it is to see if they can completely politicize the issues around our epidemic prevention and health policies," Ren wrote in his blog.

Authorities regularly warn that "foreign forces" are endangering national security and have accused them of stirring the 2019 democracy protests in Hong Kong.

Officials say the COVID policy has kept the death toll in the thousands, avoiding the millions of deaths elsewhere. Many analysts say easing the policy before boosting vaccination rates could lead to widespread illness and deaths, overwhelming hospitals.

In an editorial that did not mention the protests, People's Daily, the Party's official newspaper, urged citizens to "unswervingly implement" COVID policies.

"The harder it is, the more you have to grit your teeth," it said.

Reuters
 
Interesting to contrast the zero Covid approach of China against the Scandi country (Sweden) which didnt' lockdown at all. Most countries which have relaxed lockdown are now coming out of crisis mode and are getting back to normal, so it seems like China which has tried to deny any sort of infection at all is probably in a worse place economy-wise as it will take them a lot longer to get production up and running.
 
China Has Room To Adjust Its Strict Zero-Covid Policy: IMF

Washington: China has room to adjust its strict zero-Covid policy, the IMF said Wednesday, while underlining that the country's tough virus restrictions have been especially hard on its people.

Demonstrations against the measures have erupted across major Chinese cities in recent days, in a rare outpouring of public frustration not seen since pro-democracy rallies in 1989 were crushed with deadly force.

"Covid and Covid-related restrictions are hard on people... This has been the case everywhere, and even more so in China," an IMF spokesperson told AFP in an emailed statement.

Almost three years into the pandemic, China still deploys strict virus containment policies including snap lockdowns of entire neighborhoods and cities to stamp out flare-ups, with the measures taking a heavy toll on consumers and businesses.

While authorities have made policies more targeted, "there is scope for further gradual, safe recalibration," the Washington-based fund said.

The IMF spokesperson added that control measures after outbreaks, including major business hub Shanghai which was sealed off for months this year, weighed on domestic economic activity.

The zero-Covid policies have also had spillover effects outside China, interrupting regional and global supply chains.

With the country's economy only "partially recovered so far," an adjustment of its current policy could help growth pick up in 2023 and support the global economy at a difficult time, the IMF said.

On Tuesday, IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva warned it might have to slash growth forecasts for China, saying this is a time of "high uncertainty."

In October, the IMF cut its projection for the country's economic growth to 3.2 percent this year.

Georgieva added on Tuesday that Beijing is looking into its zero-Covid approach "with a perspective to shift to more targeted response."

For now, China continues to see clashes between police and protesters as a wave of demonstrations sparked by Covid-lockdowns expand into demands for greater freedoms.

NDTV
 
Cpt. Rishwat said:
Interesting to contrast the zero Covid approach of China against the Scandi country (Sweden) which didnt' lockdown at all. Most countries which have relaxed lockdown are now coming out of crisis mode and are getting back to normal, so it seems like China which has tried to deny any sort of infection at all is probably in a worse place economy-wise as it will take them a lot longer to get production up and running.
Click to expand...

The main issue with China is it vaccinated its population with china made covid vaccines and they dont have faith in their own vaccines. Hence they use these strict lockdowns to control the situation from time to time.
 
Two Chinese cities ease COVID curbs after protests spread

SHANGHAI/BEIJING, Nov 30 (Reuters) - The giant Chinese cities of Guangzhou and Chongqing announced an easing of COVID curbs on Wednesday, a day after demonstrators in southern Guangzhou clashed with police amid a string of protests against the world's toughest coronavirus restrictions.

The demonstrations, which spread over the weekend to Shanghai, Beijing and elsewhere, have become a show of public defiance unprecedented since President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012.

The southwestern city of Chongqing will allow close contacts of people with COVID-19, who fulfil certain conditions, to quarantine at home, a city official said.

Guangzhou, near Hong Kong, also announced an easing of curbs, but with record numbers of cases nationwide, there seems little prospect of a major U-turn in "zero-COVID" policy that Xi has said is saving lives and has proclaimed as one of his political achievements.

Some protesters and foreign security experts believe Wednesday's death of former President Jiang Zemin, who led the country for a decade of rapid economic growth after the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989, might become a new rallying point for protest after three years of pandemic.

Shanghai medical company worker Ray Lei, in his 20s, said Jiang was sometimes compared positively to Xi, given his skills on the international stage and relative openness to the West.

"So as for Jiang Zemin's death, we feel a sense of tragedy towards the future of China's leadership," said Lei, who took part in protests in Shanghai on Sunday.

Jiang's legacy was being debated on protesters' Telegram groups, with some saying it gave them a legitimate reason to gather.

"How similar is history," read one protester's post, referring to former party General Secretary Hu Yaobang, whose death in April 1989 was seen as one of the drivers of the nationwide protests that year.

"We can all go onto the streets today and lay chrysanthemums," another said.

Announcing the lifting of lockdowns in parts of Guangzhou, a city hard-hit by the recent wave of infections, authorities did not mention the protests, and the district where Tuesday's violence flared remained under tight control.

In one video of those clashes posted on Twitter, dozens of riot police clad in white protective suits and holding shields over their heads, advanced in formation over what appeared to be torn down lockdown barriers as objects flew at them.

Police were later seen escorting away a row of people in handcuffs.

Another video clip showed people throwing objects at police, while a third showed a tear gas canister landing in a small crowd on a narrow street, sending people running to escape the fumes.

Reuters verified that the videos were filmed in Guangzhou's Haizhu district, the scene of COVID-related unrest two weeks ago, but could not determine when the clips were taken or the exact sequence of events and what sparked the clashes.

Social media posts said the clashes took place on Tuesday night and were caused by a dispute over lockdown curbs.

The government of Guangzhou did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

China Dissent Monitor, run by U.S. government-funded Freedom House, estimated at least 27 demonstrations took place across China from Saturday to Monday. Australia's ASPI think tank estimated 43 protests in 22 cities.

EASING CURBS

As well as the easing of curbs in Guangzhou and Chongqing, officials in Zhengzhou, the site of a big Foxconn factory making Apple iPhones that has been the scene of worker unrest over COVID, announced the "orderly" resumption of businesses, including supermarkets, gyms and restaurants.

Earlier national health officials said China would respond to "urgent concerns" raised by the public and that COVID rules should be implemented more flexibly, according to a region's conditions.

But while the easing of some measures appears to be an attempt to appease the public, authorities have also begun to seek out those who have been at the protests.

"Police came to my front door to ask me about it all and get me to complete a written record," a Beijing resident who declined to be identified told Reuters on Wednesday.

Another resident said some friends who posted videos of protests on social media were taken to a police station and asked to sign a promise they "would not do that again".

Several people gave similar accounts to Reuters on Tuesday.

It was not clear how authorities identified the people they wanted to question, nor how many such people authorities contacted.

Beijing's Public Security Bureau did not comment.

In a statement that did not refer to the protests, the Communist Party's top body in charge of law enforcement agencies said on Tuesday that China would crack down on "the infiltration and sabotage activities of hostile forces".

The Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission also said "illegal and criminal acts that disrupt social order" would not be tolerated.

The foreign ministry has said rights and freedoms must be exercised lawfully.

COVID has spread despite China largely isolating itself from the world and demanding sacrifices from hundreds of millions to comply with relentless testing and isolation.

While infections and death numbers are low by global standards, analysts say that a reopening before increasing vaccination rates could lead to widespread illness and deaths.

The lockdowns have hammered the economy, disrupting global supply chains and roiling financial markets.

Data on Wednesday showed China's manufacturing and services activity for November posting the lowest readings since Shanghai's two-month lockdown began in April.

Reuters
 
China set to loosen COVID curbs after week of historic protests

HONG KONG/BEIJING, Dec 1 (Reuters) - China is set to announce an easing of its COVID-19 quarantine protocols in the coming days and a reduction in mass testing, sources told Reuters, a marked shift in policy after anger over the world's toughest curbs fuelled widespread protests.

Cases nationwide remain near record highs but the changes come as some cities have been lifting their lockdowns in recent days, and a top official said the ability of the virus to cause disease was weakening.

Health authorities announcing the easing in their areas have not mentioned the protests - the biggest show of civil disobedience in China for years - which ranged from candle-lit vigils in Beijing to street clashes with police in Guangzhou.

The measures due to be unveiled include a reduction in the use of mass testing and regular nucleic acid tests as well as moves to allow positive cases and close contacts to isolate at home under certain conditions, the sources familiar with the matter said.

That is a far cry from earlier protocols that led to public frustrations as entire communities were locked down, sometimes for weeks, after even just one positive case.

The frustration boiled over last week in demonstrations of public defiance unprecedented in mainland China since President Xi Jinping took power in 2012. The unrest comes as the economy is set to enter a new era of much slower growth than seen in decades.

On Thursday night, Shanghai train commuters reported wirelessly receiving an unsolicited document onto their phones saying that life in China would only get better if there was a full lifting of lockdown and that Xi step down - an apparently new tactic amid a heavy police presence in some cities ahead of the weekend.

CHANGING RULES

Less than 24 hours after violent protests in Guangzhou on Tuesday, authorities in at least seven districts of the sprawling manufacturing hub, said they were lifting temporary lockdowns. One district said it would allow schools, restaurants and businesses including cinemas to reopen.

Cities including Chongqing and Zhengzhou also announced easings.

The sense of official momentum towards a landmark shift built on Thursday as Vice Premier Sun Chunlan, who oversees COVID efforts, told a meeting of frontline experts that the Omicron variant was weakening in its ability to cause disease, allowing China to improve prevention efforts.

"After nearly three years fighting against the epidemic, our country's medical and healthcare system has withstood the test," she said in remarks published by the official Xinhua news agency.

"The vaccination rate of the entire population exceeds 90% and public health awareness and quality has been improved signifciantly," she said.

State media reported Sun saying a day earlier that China was facing a "new situation" in its response to COVID, and urged further "optimisation" of testing, treatment and quarantine policies.

The mention of weakening COVID pathogenicity contrasts with previous messages from a usually hawkish Sun about the deadliness of the virus.

"Sun's (earlier) speech, in addition to the notable easing of COVID control measures in Guangzhou yesterday, sends yet another strong signal that the zero-COVID policy will end within the next few months," analysts at Nomura said in a research note.

"These two events perhaps point to the beginning of the end of zero-COVID."

In the capital, Beijing, some communities have begun preparing for changes.

One community in the east of the city held an online poll this week on the possibility of positive cases isolating at home, residents said.

"I certainly welcome the decision by our residential community to run this vote regardless of the outcome," said resident Tom Simpson, managing director for China at the China-Britain Business Council.

He said his main concern was being forced to go into a quarantine facility, where "conditions can be grim to say the least".

Prominent nationalist commentator Hu Xijin said in a social media post on Wednesday that many asymptomatic carriers of coronavirus in Beijing were already quarantining at home.

RE-OPENING NEXT YEAR?

Expectations have grown around the world that China, while still trying to contain infections, could look to re-open its borders at some point next year once it achieves better vaccination rates among its hesitant elderly.

Health experts warn of widespread illness and death if COVID is let loose before vaccination is ramped up.

Chinese stocks and markets around the world dipped initially after the weekend protests in Shanghai, Beijing and other cities, but later recovered on hopes that public pressure could lead to a new approach by authorities.

More COVID outbreaks could weigh on China's economic activity in the near term, the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday, adding it saw scope for a safe recalibration of policies that could allow economic growth to pick up in 2023.

China's strict containment measures have dampened domestic economic activity this year and spilled over to other countries through supply chain interruptions.

Following downbeat data in an official survey on Wednesday, the Caixin/S&P Global manufacturing purchasing managers' index showed factory activity shrank in November for a fourth consecutive month.

While the change in tone on COVID appears a response to the public discontent with strict measures, authorities are also seeking out for questioning those present at the demonstrations.

China Dissent Monitor, run by U.S. government-funded Freedom House, estimated at least 27 demonstrations took place across China from Saturday to Monday. Australia's ASPI think tank estimated 51 protests in 24 cities.

Reuters
 
Hard to believe parts of China are still in lock down when the rest off the world returned to much normality ages back. Just doesn't make any sense to me seeing people being forced to do this and that almost two years on the height of the pandemic. Understandably Chinese people have now had enough of this bullying and oppression.
 
China brings in ‘emergency’ level censorship over zero-Covid protests
Crackdown launched on virtual private networks, which protesters and other citizens had used to access banned non-Chinese news and social media apps

Chinese authorities have initiated the highest “emergency response” level of censorship, according to leaked directives, including a crackdown on VPNs and other methods of bypassing online censorship after unprecedented protests demonstrated widespread public frustration with the zero-Covid policy.

The crackdown, including the tracking and questioning of protesters, comes alongside easing of pandemic restrictions, in an apparent carrot and stick approach to an outpouring of public grievances. During an extraordinary week in China, protests against zero-Covid restrictions included criticism of the authoritarian rule of Xi Jinping – which was further highlighted by the death of former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin.

Leaked directives issued to online Chinese platforms, first published by a Twitter account devoted to sharing protest-related information, have revealed authorities’ specific concerns about the growing interest among citizens in circumventing China’s so-called “Great Firewall”. The protests have been strictly censored, but protesters and other citizens have this week used VPNs to access non-Chinese news and social media apps which are banned in China.

The directives, also published and translated by the China Digital Times, a US-based news site focused on Chinese censorship, came from China’s cyberspace administration, and announced a “Level I Internet Emergency Response, the highest level of content management”.

It ordered managers to take a “hands-on approach” and strengthen content management to rapidly identify, deal with and report information about what it termed “offline disturbances” and “recent high-profile events in various provinces”.

“The incident on November 24 triggered expressions of various grievances,” it said, according to CDT’s translation and in reference to the Urumqi building fire which killed 10 people.

“Pernicious political slogans appeared in Shanghai; college and university students held conspicuous political gatherings; smears by foreign media increased; and various websites have strengthened their content management.”

It noted upcoming dates during which managers should take particular care, including the one-week anniversary of the fire, World Human Rights Day, and International Anti-Corruption Day. They also ordered e-commerce platforms to “clean-up” the availability of products and apps and “harmful content” designed to circumvent internet restrictions, like VPNs and firewall-circumventing routers.

Protesters and residents who want to air grievances about the zero-Covid policy or other aspects of life in China have been playing a cat and mouse game with censors this week. The death of 96-year-old Jiang Zemin, announced on Wednesday, provided one avenue for some to creatively express dissatisfaction with Xi.

Jiang left a mixed legacy. Elevated to leader of the Chinese Communist party during the Tiananmen protests and massacre in 1989, Jiang oversaw the subsequent crackdown, as well as repression of Falun Gong practitioners. He also shepherded China out of the international isolation that followed 1989, grew the country’s economy, and led it into greater international participation. He was also much more outwardly expressive, and participatory with media, in stark contrast to the notoriously closed-off Xi.

Under the increasingly authoritarian and globally isolated rule of Xi, young people have in recent years begun to look on the Jiang era more fondly.

More than half a million commenters flooded state broadcaster CCTV’s post on the Twitter-like platform Weibo within an hour of his death being announced, many referring to him as “Grandpa Jiang”.

“Toad, we blamed you wrongly before; you’re the ceiling, not the floor,” said one since-censored comment using a popular and mildly affectionate nickname for Jiang. In retirement, Jiang became the subject of lighthearted memes among millennial and Gen Z Chinese fans, who called themselves “toad worshippers” in thrall to his frog-like countenance and quirky mannerisms.

Some internet users had social media accounts suspended after they shared a song, titled “unfortunately it’s not you”. The word “unfortunately” in Chinese is “ke xi”, while “you” translates to “ni” – a reference to Winnie-the-Pooh which is itself a banned reference to Xi Jinping. Another popular post saw a book about Jiang, titled “He changed China” altered to say “He changed it back”, with “he” a common reference for Xi as naming him in criticism can attract swift punishment.

On Thursday, hundreds of people gathered in Jiang’s home town in the eastern city of Yangzhou to pay their respects to the former Chinese leader on Thursday evening, leaving a thick pile of bouquets around the perimeter of his former residence.

A roadside flower seller said she had “lost count” of the number of chrysanthemums – Chinese funeral flowers – she had sold on Thursday.

Reporters with Agence France-Presse witnessed people queueing to lay them against the grey stone wall of the traditional house, with some bowing and saying brief prayers.

“He was a great, patriotic and positive leader,” Li Yaling, a woman in her late 60s, told AFP in Yangzhou. “We admired him greatly, and feel loss and nostalgia now he’s gone.”

Security personnel at the site politely but firmly moved groups of mourners quickly down the narrow alley past the historic building in an apparent attempt to avoid people gathering. There is a tradition in China of using public mourning gatherings for past leaders to express discontent with the current regime.

In recent days there has been a distinct shift in messaging form officials and state media, regrading the pandemic. Officials appear to have stopped or at least reduced referencing the “dynamic zero Covid” policy by name. Lockdowns have lifted in major cities, even where relatively high case numbers are still being reported. The lower severity of Omicron compared to previous virus strains is being publicly discussed and emphasised for the first time.

Commentaries in the official state news outlet, Xinhua, on Friday urged greater individual responsibility around mask-wearing, hand washing, ventilation, and reduced gatherings. They also emphasised the need to protect vulnerable groups, and for local authorities to be faster at re-opening targeted lockdowns.

“Given that risks can be managed, what should be managed must be managed well, and there should also be relaxation when appropriate,” it said according to a translation by China analyst Bill Bishop.

The Guardian
 
"Teenagers Who...": On China Protests, Xi Jinping Has This Theory, Says Report

Beijing: In his first comment on the unprecedented public protests against his stringent zero-Covid policy, Chinese President Xi Jinping told EU President Charles Michel that they were carried out by “mainly students” who were “frustrated” after three years of the pandemic, a media report said on Friday.

Xi held talks with Michel in Beijing on Thursday. In his talks, Michel “pleaded for use of vaccines and then raised the question of China's measures and government measures,” a senior official said, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post newspaper reported from Brussels.

“And the response we got from the President was explaining why there were protests, claiming that after three years of Covid he had an issue because people were frustrated. It was mainly students or teenagers in university,” they added.
2c30sfso

European officials say Xi's comments during a meeting with Michel signal that he is ready to loosen controls further.

The Chinese leader is also reported to have said that the dominant Omicron strain is "less lethal", but expressed concern about vaccinating the elderly, the Post reported.

This is the first time Xi commented on the public protests, which were reported to have rattled his government. Following this, security has been stepped up in all main cities in China.

In a rare public outburst in China, thousands of people staged protests in various cities opposing the strictly followed zero-Covid policy under cities as well as scores of apartments were being locked down by officials to stop the coronavirus from spreading.

Protestors also called Xi, who was last month re-elected for an unprecedented third term to step down. The slogans called on the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) to quit power.

The zero-Covid policy which has been followed by China during the past three years intensified in the last few months as the Omicron variant spread fast in several cities, including Beijing.

Publicly, China has not acknowledged the protests, while the coverage has been heavily censored in the official media.

EU officials who were present during Xi-Michel talks see the Chinese President's broader remarks about pandemic controls as a signal that he was ready to further loosen tight restrictions, which have left tens of millions of people under lockdown across the country, the report said.

There is no official reaction to the report in Beijing.

Reports in the official media here in the last few days said the controls are being eased in many cities.

Xi told Michel that the dominant strain of Covid-19 in China is “now mainly Omicron, and Delta before that was much more lethal”.

It said a second EU official stated that the Chinese leadership had intimated that it would try to push vaccinations in response to the unrest, with Michel sharing with Xi and his most senior underlings the European experience of rolling out mass vaccinations.

Xi told Michel that China had “high rates of vaccination, except for elderly people, which is a challenge”, they said.

“My sense was that this [exchange] was something that was informative. I had a feeling that China would on its side be increasingly looking to incentivise its citizens to be vaccinated, to follow a tiny bit of the European experience,” the second official said.

In China, only 68.7 per cent of people over 60 have had three doses of a Covid-19 vaccine, official figures show. For those aged 80 and over, only 40.4 per cent have had a booster dose.

China so far used locally produced vaccines and not pushed hard for vaccinating the elders, which experts say due to lack of confidence, while the world over elders have been vaccinated first for Covid.

China has yet to license the use of Western vaccines for the general public, but during a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz last month, Xi signalled that foreigners living in the country would be approved to take the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine.

BioNTech filed for a Chinese licence for its mRNA vaccines last year, but it has yet to be granted. PTI KJV PMS AKJ PMS PMS

NDTV
 
Inside China's fight over the future of zero-COVID

SHANGHAI, Dec 2 (Reuters) - Samuel Ren is sick of zero-COVID.

"Omicron is not a threat, it is just like a normal cold," said the IT worker in his mid-20s in Shanghai, describing China's ongoing lockdown measures as "ridiculous".

His frustration about civil rights and economic damage won't sway Cai Shiyu, a 70-year-old resident of the megacity who has heart disease and high blood pressure.

"This isn't like a cold that just goes away after a while," said Cai, who feels one case of COVID-19 is too many to tolerate. "Otherwise the epidemic will definitely rebound."

Opinions about President Xi Jinping's signature "zero-COVID" policy vary wildly across China, a country often viewed from overseas as a surveillance state that enforces iron discipline.

The fierce debate, which has ignited several anti-lockdown protests, illustrates the difficulties facing Xi and his government in relaxing the world's most rigid COVID rules while heading off national discontent.

After nearly three years, a significant loosening of zero-COVID measures has been signalled by senior government officials and public health experts. Vice Premier Sun Chunlan said on Thursday that China's health system had "withstood the test" of COVID, allowing further adjustments to state policies.

This unnerves people such as Cai, who say a low death toll testifies to the merits of the hardline approach.

Officially, there have been about 5,200 COVID deaths in China, versus more than 1 million in the United States, 690,000 in Brazil and 212,000 in Britain. A U.S.-scale death rate would have seen over 4 million die in the country of 1.4 billion people.

The potential risks of moving away from strict curbs, just as daily infections hit record levels, are heightened by comparatively low vaccination rates among the elderly and concerns about the resilience of the healthcare system.

Syler Sun, an advertising industry worker in Shanghai, reflected the conflict felt by many people about zero-COVID rules in the face of the Omicron variant, which tends to cause less severe illness.

"We need some changes. But as for what these changes will be, I'm don't know and I'm not smart enough," Sun said. "You can have zero-COVID, but you can't have a healthy economy, and you can have a healthy economy, but you can't have zero-COVID."

China's National Health Commission didn't immediately respond to a request for comment about its plans for COVID containment.

Beijing says its policies have always "put people first" and have been designed to protect the most lives at the lowest cost. It has also said that recent policy adjustments are a refinement and not an abandonment of zero-COVID.

'GUN TO KILL MOSQUITOES'

The measures are indeed tough.

A single COVID case can trigger the lockdown of a building or residential compound, and entire cities have been sealed off with only hours of notice.

Youth unemployment is at record highs and economic growth has plummeted this year, with factories hit and supply chains disrupted by lockdowns and other restrictions.

"If we continue to handle this virus with the same policies used at the start of the epidemic, it feels a little like using an anti-aircraft gun to kill mosquitoes," Wang Weizheng, a Wuhan-based doctor, said on Chinese social media site Weibo.

Recent decisions to cut quarantine times and scale back testing requirements have been widely interpreted on social media and by analysts as the first tentative shift away from zero-COVID. Many have welcomed the changes, but others remain wary.

Laura Yasaitis, a public health expert at the Eurasia Group think-tank who follows China's zero-COVID policies, said fear of the virus likely varied widely across the country, as well as within cities or provinces.

"Even these recent hesitant moves to loosen restrictions have led to reactions that hint at unease among the general public," she said.

She pointed to an incident last month in Hebei province's Shijiazhuang where authorities were forced to backtrack on a decision to shut down free COVID testing booths after local people complained of potential outbreak risks.

Many of the Foxconn (2354.TW) workers who broke out of a "closed loop" factory in Zhengzhou last month said they did so because they were afraid of getting infected.

A study by Brown University researchers published in August, drawing on social media data and interviews with Shanghai residents, found that zero-COVID policies had received strong support in China, with compliance driven by "gruesome scenes" from countries where COVID measures were looser.

Indeed, higher death tolls in many other countries have bolstered public support for the government's policies among some sections of the population.

"I used to live abroad and I feel as though China's control has been much better than abroad," said Wang Jian, a 32-year-old office manager in Shanghai. "There are different ways to handle the virus, China's is just determined by China's national conditions, and, looking at the numbers, I think it's OK."

'FEARS WILL NOT GO AWAY'

The public discord about zero-COVID is accompanied by apparent differences among health professionals.

Zhang Wenhong, head of Shanghai's expert COVID-19 team, said last month that the virus had become less virulent with Omicron and this, along with high overall vaccination levels, could finally give China a "way out" of the pandemic disruption.

Coronavirus expert Zhong Nanshan, who helped draw up China's initial COVID-19 response, said Omicron's mortality rate was relatively low "so citizens do not need to worry too much".

Yet Zhou Jiatong, head of the Center for Disease Control in southwestern Guangxi region, struck a less optimistic tone about the variant in a paper published last month by the Shanghai Journal of Preventive Medicine.

He estimated that if mainland China had loosened COVID restrictions in the same way that Hong Kong did this year, it would have faced more than 233 million infections and more than 2 million deaths.

The experts didn't respond to requests for further comment.

Katherine Mason, one of the researchers involved in the Brown University study, said Chinese authorities had work to do before they could move away from COVID curbs.

"Until they actually create the conditions - through much more widespread vaccination, capacity-building in hospitals, and a plan to slowly expose people in a step-wise fashion - in which the loss of life will not be too severe, people's fears will rightly not go away," Mason said.

Officials have repeatedly said that China's health system would be unable to cope with a surge in cases, with medical resources unevenly distributed across the country.

According to a paper published last year by Shanghai's Fudan School of Public Health, China had only 4.37 ICU beds per 100,000 people in 2021, compared with 34.2 in the United States as of 2015.

Meanwhile vaccination rates among people aged 60 and above have remained little changed since the summer, according to official figures. Those who had received two doses inched up from 85.6% in August to 86.4% in November, while the booster shot rate rose from 67.8% to 68.2%, according to China's CDC.

The United States has inoculated 92% of over-60s with 70% receiving boosters, Germany's figures are 91% and 85.9% and Japan's 92% and 90%, the CDC said.

China said this week that it would launch a new vaccination drive among the over-60s.

FIERCE OR PAPER TIGER?

The demographic profile of the weekend's protesters suggests that younger city dwellers are increasingly willing to question the need to devote so much of the country's resources to contain a virus they believe is no longer a major threat.

"I used to worry I might die from catching COVID, but now that so many of my friends have recovered from it, I think of it as just a flu," a Beijing resident in his 20s surnamed Wang told Reuters on Saturday. Wang had joined neighbours in previous days to pressure local authorities to release them from lockdown.

One contributor to China's Jinri Toutiao news and social media site said the only people who still believed in lockdowns were retirees and those who didn't need to make a living.

"Before, the virus was as fierce as a tiger, but now it is a paper tiger," the contributor wrote last week.

Not everyone believes protesting is the answer, though.

"There is no need to resort to these methods without using your brain. These actions will disturb the public order," said Adam Yan, 26, who works in the food industry.

"The COVID situation is quite complicated, and people are coming up against new problems. I think it's best to believe in the government and each do our best."

Reuters
 
Beijing, Shenzhen loosen more COVID curbs as China fine-tunes policy

SHANGHAI, Dec 3 (Reuters) - Beijing residents on Saturday cheered the removal of COVID-19 testing booths while Shenzhen said it would no longer require commuters to present test results to travel, as an easing of China's virus curbs gathered pace.

Although daily cases are near all-time highs, some cities are taking steps to loosen COVID testing requirements and quarantine rules as China looks to make its zero-COVID policy more targeted amid a sharp economic slowdown and public frustration that has boiled over into unrest.

The southern city of Shenzhen announced it would no longer require people to show a negative COVID test result to use public transport or enter parks, following similar moves by Chengdu and Tianjin.

Many testing booths in Beijing have been shut, as the capital stops demanding negative test results as a condition to enter places such as supermarkets and prepares to do so for subways from Monday. Many other venues, including offices, still require testing.

A video showing workers in Beijing removing a testing booth by crane onto a truck went viral on Chinese social media on Friday.

"This should have been taken away earlier!," said one commentator. "Banished to history," said another.

Reuters could not immediately verify the authenticity of the footage. At some of the remaining booths, however, residents grumbled about hour-long queues for the tests due to the closures.

CHINA OUTLIER

Three years after COVID emerged in central China, the nation has been a global outlier with a zero-tolerance approach of lockdowns and frequent testing. The authorities say the measures are needed to save lives and avoid overwhelming China's healthcare system.

China began tweaking its approach last month, urging localities to become more targeted. Initial reactions, however, were marked with confusion and even tighter lockdowns as cities scrambled to keep a lid on rising cases.

Then a deadly apartment fire last month in the far western city of Urumqi sparked dozens of protests against COVID curbs in over 20 cities in a wave unprecedented in mainland China since President Xi Jinping took power in 2012.

Authorities detained several people who participated in the protests and police in cities such as Shanghai have been checking commuters' phones for apps or virtual private network software that protesters used to communicate, according to protesters and social media posts.

On Saturday, police kept a heavy presence around Liangmaqiao junction in east Beijing, as authorities sought to put off any potential follow-up to last weekend’s unrest.

A similarly large police presence could be seen on streets close to Shanghai's Wulumuqi Road, which is named after Urumqi and was the site of a vigil for the victims of the fire that turned into protests last weekend.

FURTHER REDUCTIONS COMING

China is set to further announce a nationwide easing of testing requirements as well as allowing positive cases and close contacts to isolate at home under certain conditions, people familiar with the matter told Reuters this week.

Xi, during a meeting with European Union officials in Beijing on Thursday, blamed the mass protests on youth frustrated by years of the pandemic, but said the now-dominant Omicron variant of the virus paved the way for fewer restrictions, EU officials said.

Officials have only recently begun to downplay the dangers of Omicron, a significant change in messaging in a country where fear of COVID has run deep.

On Friday, some Beijing neighbourhoods posted guidelines on social media on how positive cases can quarantine at home, a landmark move that marks a break from official guidance to send such people to central quarantine.

Still, the relief has also been accompanied by concerns, especially from people who feel more exposed to the disease.

Many analysts say they still do not anticipate a significant reopening until at least after March, as China must first achieve results in a just-launched vaccination drive targeting the elderly.

Estimates for how many deaths China could see if it pivots to a full reopening have ranged from 1.3 million to over 2 million, though some researchers said the death toll could be reduced sharply if there was a focus on vaccination.

"None of this should be interpreted as a fundamental shift away from the zero-COVID policy but rather an effort to make it more streamlined and less costly. The goal is still to get cases back close to zero," Capital Economics said in a note, referring to the recent fine-tuning of policy.

"The alternative of letting the virus spread widely before more of the elderly are vaccinated and healthcare capacity has been ramped up would result in a higher death rate than in many Asian countries that reopened earlier, undermining China’s zero-COVID success," they said.

China reported 32,827 daily local COVID-19 infections on Saturday, down from 34,772 a day earlier. As of Friday, China had reported 5,233 COVID-related deaths and 331,952 cases with symptoms.

Reuters
 
Chinese City Where Apartment Fire Killed 10 Eases Covid Curbs After Protests

Beijing: More Chinese cities including Urumqi in the far west announced an easing of coronavirus curbs on Sunday as China tries to make its zero-COVID policy more targeted and less onerous after unprecedented protests against restrictions last weekend.

Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region and where the protests first erupted, will reopen malls, markets, restaurants and other venues from Monday, authorities said, ending strict lockdowns after months.

There was no sign of any significant unrest this weekend, although police were out in force in the Liangmaqiao area of Beijing and in Shanghai around Wulumuqi Road, which is named after Urumqi. Both sites saw protests a week ago.

A deadly fire last month in Urumqi sparked dozens of protests against COVID curbs in over 20 cities after some social media users said victims had been unable to escape the blaze because their apartment building was locked down. Authorities denied that.

The protests were an unprecedented show of civil disobedience in mainland China since President Xi Jinping took power in 2012.

In the days since, numerous cities have announced the easing of lockdowns, testing requirements, and quarantine rules.

Vice Premier Sun Chunlan, who oversees COVID efforts, said last week the ability of the virus to cause disease was weakening - a change in messaging that aligns with what many health authorities around the world have said for more than a year.

China is set to further announce a nationwide easing of testing requirements as well as allowing positive cases and close contacts to isolate at home under certain conditions, people familiar with the matter told Reuters last week.

RULES LIFTED

For the time being, steps to ease restrictions have varied across the country.

People in Zhengzhou, the central city home to the world's largest iPhone plant which was last month rocked by violent unrest, will no longer have to show COVID test results to take public transport, taxis and to visit "public areas", authorities said on Sunday.

Karaoke bars, beauty salons, internet cafes and other indoor venues can reopen but must check for a negative 48-hour COVID test result.

In Shanghai from Monday a negative COVID test will no longer be required to take public transport and visit parks, authorities announced on Sunday.

Elsewhere both Nanning, capital of the southern region of Guangxi and Wuhan, the central city where the pandemic began in 2019, on Sunday cancelled a requirement for a negative COVID test to take the subway.

Guangzhou's Haizhu district, which experienced violent clashes last month, said Sunday that henceforth it advises people with no COVID symptoms not to get tested for the virus unless they belong to certain special groups such as frontline workers, or those with a red or yellow code.

On Saturday in Beijing, authorities said the purchase of fever, cough and sore throat medicines no longer required registration. The restriction had been imposed because authorities believed people were using the medication to hide COVID infections.

Authorities in various districts in the capital have in recent days announced that people who test positive for the virus can quarantine at home.

Some inconsistencies as the restrictions are eased have angered people, including a requirement in some places for a negative COVID test even though mass testing centres were closing.

In Beijing and Wuhan that caused lengthy queues at the few remaining testing booths.

"Are they stupid or just plain mean?" one social media user asked. "We shouldn't shut down COVID testing stations until we get rid of the COVID test pass."

New daily case numbers dropped nationwide to 31,824, authorities said on Sunday, which may be due in part to fewer people being tested. Authorities also reported two new COVID deaths.

'PREPARING TO EXIT ZERO-COVID'

Xi's zero-COVID policy has had a devastating impact on the world's second-largest economy and roiled global supply chains.

China argues the policy, which has all-but-shut its borders to travel, is necessary to save lives and prevent the health care system from being overwhelmed.

Despite the easing of restrictions, many experts said China was unlikely to begin significant reopening before March at the earliest, given the need to ramp up vaccinations, especially among its vast elderly population.

"Although there have been quite a few local changes to COVID policies lately, we do not interpret them as China abandoning zero-COVID policy just yet," Goldman Sachs said in a note on Sunday.

"Rather, we see them as clear evidence of the Chinese government preparing for an exit, and trying to minimize the economic and social cost of COVID control in the meantime. The preparations may last a few months and there are likely to be challenges along the way."

Estimates for how many deaths China could see if it pivots to a full reopening have ranged from 1.3 million to more than 2 million, though some researchers said the death toll could be reduced sharply if there was a focus on vaccination.

Authorities recently announced they would speed up COVID vaccinations for elderly people but many remain reluctant to get the jab.

"Some people have doubts about the safety and effectiveness of the country's new coronavirus vaccine," an article in the ruling Communist Party's official People's Daily said on Sunday.

"Experts say this perception is wrong," it said, adding that domestically made vaccines were safe.

Foreign COVID vaccines are not approved in China and Xi is unwilling to change that, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said on Saturday.

NDTV
 
Xi Jinping "Unwilling To Accept Better Vaccines" Despite Raging Protests: US

Washington:

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is unwilling to accept Western vaccines despite the challenges China is facing with COVID-19, and while recent protests there are not a threat to Communist Party rule, they could affect his personal standing, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said on Saturday.

Although China's daily COVID cases are near all-time highs, some cities are taking steps to loosen testing and quarantine rules after Xi's zero-COVID policy triggered a sharp economic slowdown and public unrest.

Haines, speaking at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum in California, said that despite the social and economic impact of the virus, Xi "is unwilling to take a better vaccine from the West, and is instead relying on a vaccine in China that's just not nearly as effective against Omicron."

"Seeing protests and the response to it is countering the narrative that he likes to put forward, which is that China is so much more effective at government," Haines said.

"It's, again, not something we see as being a threat to stability at this moment, or regime change or anything like that," she said, while adding: "How it develops will be important to Xi's standing."

China's foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent on Sunday.

China has not approved any foreign COVID vaccines, opting for those produced domestically, which some studies have suggested are not as effective as some foreign ones. That means easing virus prevention measures could come with big risks, according to experts.

China had not asked the United States for vaccines, the White House said earlier in the week.

One U.S. official told Reuters there was "no expectation at present" that China would approve western vaccines.

"It seems fairly far-fetched that China would greenlight Western vaccines at this point. It's a matter of national pride, and they'd have to swallow quite a bit of it if they went this route," the official said.

Haines also said North Korea recognized that China was less likely to hold it accountable for what she said was Pyongyang's "extraordinary" number of weapons tests this year.

Amid a record year for missile tests, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said last week his country intends to have the world's most powerful nuclear force.

Speaking on a later panel, Admiral John Aquilino, the commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said China had no motivation to restrain any country, including North Korea, that was generating problems for the United States.

"I'd argue quite differently that it's in their strategy to drive those problems," Aquilino said of China.

He said China had considerable leverage to press North Korea over its weapons tests, but that he was not optimistic about Beijing "doing anything helpful to stabilize the region."

NDTV
 
<b>Chinese authorities have eased some COVID restrictions in selected cities across the country following recent widespread anti-lockdown protests.</b>

A slight ease in testing requirements is being introduced in Beijing, where residents can now board buses and trains without a virus test for the first time in months.

In the southern city of Shenzhen, commuters will no longer need to show a negative test result to use public transport and enter pharmacies, parks and tourist attractions.

However, a negative result obtained within the past 48 hours is still required to enter venues like shopping malls, which have gradually reopened, with many restaurants providing takeaways.

China, which follows a strict zero-COVID policy aiming to isolate every infected person, is the last major country trying to stop transmission completely through quarantines, testing and mass lockdowns.

However, anti-lockdown protests which have erupted in recent weeks in Shanghai and other cities as protesters called for Xi Jinping to step down as president, were met with arrests and pepper spray.

Despite the protests, Chinese authorities have maintained that they will continue with the zero-COVID strategy.

However, earlier this week COVID lockdowns and some restrictions were eased in major cities including Guangzhou, Chongqing and Zhengzhou.

From Monday, people in Shanghai will no longer have to show a negative test to take public transport and visit parks.

In city of Nanning, capital of the southern region of Guangxi, it is no longer required to have a negative test to take the train.

Authorities in various districts in Beijing have announced that people who test positive for the virus can quarantine at home.

Authorities in the southwestern city of Chongqing said they would now allow close contacts of people with COVID-19, who meet certain conditions, to quarantine at home.

The "orderly" resumption of businesses, including supermarkets, gyms and restaurants was announced in Zhengzhou.

On Sunday, China announced another 35,775 positive cases from the past 24 hours, 31,607 of which were asymptomatic, bringing its total to 336,165 with 5,235 deaths.

The country reported two additional deaths, in the provinces of Shandong and Sichuan - although no information was given about their ages or whether they were fully vaccinated.

Although many have questioned the accuracy of the Chinese figures, they remain relatively low compared to the US and other nations.

While nine in 10 Chinese people have been vaccinated, only 66% of people over 80 have had one jab, while 40% have received a booster, according to the National Health Commission.

Given the figures and the fact that relatively few Chinese people have built up antibodies by being exposed to the virus, some fear millions could die if restrictions were lifted entirely.

While the easing of some restrictions signals more freedoms for people, health experts and economists expect the zero-COVID strategy to stay in place at least until mid-2023 and possibly into 2024.

https://news.sky.com/story/china-ea...ockdown-protests-12761398?dcmp=snt-sf-twitter
 
Covid is weakening, China state media claims, as major cities lift lockdowns
Unnamed expert tells state media outlet Yicai that Covid could be downgraded from a category A disease to category C

Coronavirus is weakening and management protocols could be downgraded, an expert on China’s state media has claimed, after unprecedented protests last week led to a major shift in Beijing’s commitment to its zero-Covid policy.

Since January 2020, China has classified Covid-19 as a Category B infectious disease but has managed it under Category A protocols, which give local authorities the power to put patients and their close contacts into quarantine and lock down affected regions.

Category A diseases in China include bubonic plague and cholera, while Sars, Aids and anthrax fall under Category B. Category C diseases include influenza, leprosy and mumps. Infectious diseases that can be easily spread and have a high fatality rate are classified as Class A or Class B but managed as Class A.

But an unnamed infectious disease expert told Chinese media outlet Yicai that more than 95% of China’s cases are now asymptomatic and mild, and the fatality rate is very low. Under such circumstances, adhering to Class A management is not in line with science, Yicai reported on Sunday.

Covid-19 could be downgraded to Category B management or even Category C, the expert was quoted as saying.

Any adjustment to the management of infectious diseases by the National Health Commission, China’s top health authority, requires the approval of the State Council, or cabinet.

Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan last week said that China is facing “a new situation” as the Omicron virus weakens, becoming the first high-ranking government official to publicly acknowledge that the new coronavirus’s ability to cause damage has diminished. The government and its media is now heavily emphasising the reduced severity, and is promoting personal mitigation measures and vaccination.

It marked an abrupt political turnaround for the country’s zero-Covid policy, which Xi Jinping had – until the protests – dictated was China’s only path out of the pandemic. The policy had seen China’s 1.4 billion people largely protected from the virus during most of the pandemic, but was significantly challenged by the emergence of more transmissible variants. Local officials, who faced punishment for failing to control local outbreaks, were increasingly turning to overzealous responses, sometimes over just a handful of cases.

“Local party leaders knew the lockdown was Xi Jinping’s top priority, so to show legitimacy and competency, to appeal to Xi, many took more extreme measures,” said Prof Chi Chunhuei, the director of Oregon State University’s centre for global health.

But an outpouring of public anger appears to have prompted authorities to lift some of the more onerous restrictions, even as they say the zero-Covid strategy, which aims to isolate every infected person, is still in place. There are some fear millions could die if restrictions were lifted entirely.

Throughout the pandemic, Covid restrictions have been managed by different levels of government, resulting in inconsistent and often confusing rules. The easing of restrictions appears to be operating in the same manner.

Beijing, Shanghai, Zhengzhou and Shenzhen are among cities to end a requirement for negative test results in order to board public transport. Beijing authorities have also ordered hospitals to stop refusing people with a negative result from entering, but this requirement is still in place in other cities, like Chengdu and Guangzhou.

Chongqing still requires a negative test from within the last three days to enter public places, while Zhejiang province has ended routine Covid tests entirely, according to state media.

The numbers of reported cases each day have also dropped in some areas, as testing is reduced.

“The information at this stage will be a bit chaotic,” said the former editor of state-backed tabloid, the Global Times, and now social commentator Hu Xijin, said on Weibo.

Analysts have said that exiting zero-Covid will pose a major political challenge for Xi. There have already been reports of confusion and complaints as the rollback of some zero-covid infrastructure clashes with rules still in place, such as the reduction in testing stations causing long queues for those who still need tests to travel or take part in particular activities.

“What’s the point in closing testing booths before dropping the need to show test results completely?” said one Weibo user.

China is the last major country trying to stop transmission completely through quarantines, lockdowns and mass testing. Concerns over vaccination rates are believed to figure prominently in the ruling Communist party’s determination to stick to its hard-line strategy.

While nine in 10 Chinese have been vaccinated, only 66% of people over 80 have been given one shot while just 40% have received a booster, according to the commission. It said 86% of people over 60 are vaccinated.

Last week’s demonstrations, the largest in decades, saw protesters in cities including Shanghai and Beijing demand an easing of Covid restrictions. Some called for Chinese Xi to step down.

The Guardian
 
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