Crowds angered by lockdowns call for China's Xi to step down (UPDATE)

[Omaha Steve]

Last edited Sun Nov 27, 2022, 10:38 AM - Edit history (1)

Source: AP

By DAKE KANG and HUIZHONG WU 32 minutes ago

SHANGHAI (AP) — Protesters pushed to the brink by China’s strict COVID measures in Shanghai called for the removal of the country’s all-powerful leader and clashed with police Sunday as crowds took to the streets in several cities in an astounding challenge to the government.

Police forcibly cleared the demonstrators in China’s financial capital who called for Xi Jinping’s resignation and the end of the Chinese Communist Party’s rule — but hours later people rallied again in the same spot, and social media reports indicated protests also spread to at least seven other cities, including the capital of Beijing, and dozens of university campuses.

Largescale protests are exceedingly rare in China, where public expressions of dissent are routinely stifled — but a direct rebuke of Xi, the country’s most powerful leader in decades, is extraordinary.

Three years after the virus first emerged, China is the only major country still trying to stop transmission of COVID-19 — a “zero COVID” policy that regularly sees millions of people confined to their homes for weeks at a time and requires near-constant testing. The measures were originally widely accepted for minimizing deaths while other countries suffered devastating wavs of infections, but that consensus has begun to fray in recent weeks.



Chinese police officers block off access to a site where protesters had gathered in Shanghai on Sunday, Nov. 27, 2022. Protests against China's strict "zero-COVID" policies resurfaced in Shanghai and Beijing on Sunday afternoon, continuing a round of demonstrations that have spread across the country since a deadly apartment fire in the northwestern city of Urumqi led to questions over such rigid anti-virus measures. (AP Photo)



Original story at same link below.

By HUIZHONG WU an hour ago

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Protests against China’s strict “zero-COVID” policies resurfaced in Shanghai and Beijing on Sunday afternoon, continuing a round of demonstrations that have spread across the country since a deadly apartment fire in the northwestern city of Urumqi led to questions over such rigid anti-virus measures.

Crowds stood and filmed as police started shoving at people who had gathered in on the same street in Shanghai where police had cleared hundreds away with force just hours before.

They shouted, “We don’t want PCR tests, we want freedom!” according to a witness who did not want to be named for fear of retribution.

Since Friday people have held protests across China, where street demonstrations are extremely rare. But anger and frustration have flared over the deaths from a fire in an apartment building in Urumqi that the public believes was caused by excessive lockdown measures that delayed rescue.



Residents stand in line to enter a store which controls the flow of shoppers in Beijing, Sunday, Nov. 27, 2022. Protests against China's strict zero-COVID policies in Shanghai continued on Saturday afternoon, after police cleared away hundreds of protesters in the early morning hours with force and pepper spray. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)


Read more: https://apnews.com/article/taiwan-health-fires-social-media-50d7515e5fae00f5054062209e9306cc?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_03

[dalton99a]

1. Kick

A crowdsourced list on social media showed that there were demonstrations in 50 universities. Videos posted on social media that said they were filmed in Nanjing in the east, Guangzhou in the south, Beijing in the north and at least five other cities showed protesters tussling with police in white protective suits or dismantling barricades used to seal off neighborhoods. The Associated Press could not independently verify all the protests.

Online, videos from the scenes quickly emerged. Some of the most shared videos came from Shanghai, which had borne a devastating lockdown in spring in which people struggled to secure groceries and medicines and were forcefully taken into centralized quarantine.

In the dark early hours of Sunday, standing on the road named after a city in Xinjiang where at least 10 people had just died in an apartment fire, protesters chanted “Xi Jinping! Step down! CCP! Step down.”

A protester who chanted with the crowd confirmed that people did shout for the removal of Xi Jinping, China’s leader — words that many would never have thought would have been said in one of China’s biggest cities.

[twodogsbarking]

2. I hope I live to see the Chinese people take back their country.

Same for US of freakin' A.

[Blues Heron]

3. do we have any idea what their excess deaths have been for the last three years?

Is this at least keeping deaths down or are they covering up massive numbers of dead people as evidenced by sat photos of mass graves, piles of extra coffins etc.

Anybody? Buehler?

[paleotn]

7. That's the thing about China. Who knows?

Any data released by the Chinese government must be taken with a large container of salt. Regardless, Covid is endemic in the human population globally now, so lockdowns at this point are idiotic. That ship sailed in early 2020 and would have required a logical, draconian approach by every nation on earth to be effective. That didn't happen, so vaccination is the order of the day to slow transmission and disease to an acceptable level. China seems to be fighting a war that's long since lost.

[Blues Heron]

8. Im not talking about self reporting- Im talking intelligence

do we have any intel on excess deaths based on evidence like sat photos or coffin orders etc.?

[Samrob]

4. I find no joy in this. Nor do I believe we should take our eyes off COVID.

There are deaths all around us about which the media and the administration are not focusing on. China was the canary in the mine before. Why do we believe that it is not now?

[Farmer-Rick]

9. Yup, it's still averaging over 300 deaths from COVID-19 a day in the US.

That's twice as high as deaths from a bad flu season and 3 times as high as deaths from a mild flu season.

COVID is still killing a lot of people in the US.

[Blues Heron]

11. from the cdc - our last six weeks of cases

week ending - total new cases
11/23 - 305,082
11/16 - 281,691
11/09 - 290,879
11/02 - 274,451
10/26 - 262,483
10/19 - 261,423

[progree]

13. And, the world is up 38% in reported daily new cases since November 2

(7 day moving average)

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/world/covid-cases.html
(no paywall, no quota)

[eppur_se_muova]

5. Get rid of Xi ? Good idea. Get rid of COVID lockdowns ? Dumb. nt

[Polybius]

15. They are still doing 2020-style lockdowns

No US states or cities have mandates anywhere near as strict as China.

[paleotn]

6. Xi is violating the unwritten pact with the Chinese people, and the people are pissed.

Deng Xiaoping was the author of the pact. Leave politics to the Party and in return, the Party will take, what was for the time, a vastly more hands off approach to the economy, allowing the capitalist genie out of the bottle. Not completely in a western sense, but enough to keep China relevant globally. Deng knew it was the only way to keep China from falling behind the West to the point of complete insignificance. Now Xi is attempting to rewrite that pact and the people just aren't having it.

Yes, China has problems. Tons of economic problems, but this isn't the solution. You simply can't stuff the capitalist genie back in the bottle by authoritarian force. Add to this the single most inept and idiotic response to the Covid pandemic and you've got a gigantic mess.

[dalton99a]

10. Factories are moving out of China because of this

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/10/6/vietnam-eyes-chinas-tech-crown-as-firms-flee-zero-covid

Vietnam eyes China’s tech crown as firms tire of ‘zero COVID’
Apple, Google, and Samsung are among the tech giants expanding operations in the fast-growing Southeast Asian country.
By Govi Snell
Published On 6 Oct 2022

Frustrated with China’s “zero-COVID” lockdowns halting production at a moment’s notice, manufacturers are seeking alternatives to the world’s biggest economy and No 1 manufacturing hub. Vietnam, with its cheap labour, geographic proximity to China and stable political environment, is a key beneficiary.

“For a lot of these companies, they withstood the trade war, they withstood rising labour costs in China, and then they withstood the breakdown of supply chains during COVID… [China’s] zero-COVID policy I think now is the straw that breaks the camel’s back,” Greg Poling, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told Al Jazeera.

Foxconn and Luxshare Precision Industry, two of Apple’s most important suppliers, are currently in talks to make Apple Watches and Macbooks in Vietnam for the first time. To support its Vietnam expansion, Taiwan-based Foxconn has announced plans to invest $300m in a new 50.5-hectare factory in Bac Giang, a northern province located about 50km (31 miles) from Hanoi.

Google is set to begin manufacturing its Pixel smartphones in Vietnam from 2023, while Samsung plans to start making semiconductor components next summer at a sprawling factory in Thai Nguyen province.

“It’s just too expensive to be in China now,” Albert Tan, an associate professor at the Asian Institute of Management in Manila, Philippines, told Al Jazeera. “The problem is that the lockdowns are so unpredictable and so frequent… Many factories are moving to Vietnam.”

[Irish_Dem]

12. The fact the protests are in Beijing and Shanghai is significant.

Beijing is very strict, conservative and very pro-Xi.
Shanghai is the financial hub of China, and very powerful.

The fact the protests are happening at all is significant.

In the past protestors would have been killed or sent to prison.

[catsudon]

14. Top uni student using Friedmann Equations as protest slogan.

(the Chinese transliteration of Friedmann sounds similar to "freedom" )