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Covid restrictions lifted in Chinese city of
Guangzhou after protests
Police still searching for protesters in other cities
as top security body urges crackdown on ‘hostile forces’
Helen
Davidson and agencies
Wed 30 Nov
2022 10.49 GMT
Authorities
have abruptly lifted Covid restrictions in the Chinese city of Guangzhou, where
protesters scuffled with police on Tuesday night, as police searched for
demonstrators in other cities and the country’s top security body called for a
crackdown on “hostile forces”.
After days
of extraordinary protests in the country that also prompted international
demonstrations in solidarity, the US and Canada urged China not to harm or
intimidate protesters opposing Covid-19 lockdowns.
On
Wednesday afternoon, authorities suddenly announced a lifting of lockdowns in
about half of the districts across the southern city of Guangzhou. Official
announcements told local officials to variously remove “temporary control
orders” and to redesignate areas as low risk. They also announced an end to
mass PCR testing.
One
resident told the Guardian that within an hour of the announcement they had
seen apartment security staff quickly leave, and neighbours hurrying out with
luggage “to escape”.
The easing
of restrictions, which came despite rising cases in the city, did not extend to
all districts. Some areas, including parts of Haizhu, where protesters scuffled
with police on Tuesday night, according to witnesses and footage, remained
under restrictions.
The city
recorded almost 7,000 Covid cases on Tuesday. In Haizhu there had been several
protests and clashes with police over the past month, and it was the site of
the most recent protests in a wave of civil disobedience that escalated
dramatically on Friday.
Late on
Tuesday, security personnel in hazmat suits formed ranks shoulder-to-shoulder,
taking cover under riot shields, to make their way down a street in Haizhu
district as glass smashed around them, videos posted on social media showed.
In the
footage – geolocated by Agence France-Presse – people could be heard screaming
and shouting as orange and blue barricades were pictured strewn across the
ground. Others threw objects at the police and later nearly a dozen men were
filmed being taken away with their hands bound by cable ties.
A Guangzhou
resident told AFP on Wednesday he witnessed about 100 police officers converge
on Houjiao village in Haizhu district and arrest at least three men on Tuesday
night.
Haizhu, a
district of more than 1.8 million people, has been the source of the bulk of
Guangzhou’s Covid-19 cases. Much of the area has been under lockdown since late
October.
On Tuesday,
the White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said the US stood up
for peaceful protesters. “We don’t want to see protesters physically harmed,
intimidated or coerced in any way. That’s what peaceful protest is all about
and that’s what we have continued to stand up for whether it’s in China or Iran
or elsewhere around the world,” he told CNN.
Canada’s
prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said on Tuesday that everyone in China should
be allowed to protest and enjoy freedom of expression, and that Canadians were
closely watching the protests against the country’s zero-Covid policy.
“Everyone
in China should be allowed to express themselves, should be allowed to share
their perspectives and indeed protest,” Trudeau said. “We’re going to continue
to ensure that China knows we’ll stand up for human rights, we’ll stand with
people who are expressing themselves.”
Discontent
with China’s stringent Covid prevention strategy three years into the pandemic
has ignited into protests in cities across the country, in the biggest wave of
civil disobedience since the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, took power a decade
ago.
Chinese
authorities have been seeking out people who gathered at weekend protests, some
who were at the Beijing demonstrations told Reuters. The number of people who
have been detained at the demonstrations and in follow-up police actions is not
known.
China’s
foreign ministry says rights and freedoms must be exercised within the
framework of the law.
Police were
out in force in Beijing and Shanghai on Tuesday to prevent further protests
against pandemic restrictions that have disrupted the lives of millions,
damaged the economy and briefly led to rare calls for Xi to step down.
Hugh Yu,
who says he participated in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and now lives in
Canada, called on Canadians and the Canadian government to speak out against
China’s actions. “A lot of people don’t want to die in silence,” he said of
protesters in China. “I don’t want to stand here and speak to you guys. But I
have no choice.”
On Tuesday,
China sent university students home and flooded streets with police in an
attempt to disperse the most widespread anti-government protests in decades, as
the country’s top security body called for a crackdown on “hostile forces”. In
an apparent effort to tackle anger at the zero-Covid policies, authorities also
announced plans to step up vaccination of older people.
Such a move
is a vital precursor to loosening controls without mass deaths or overwhelming
the health system in a country where there is almost no natural immunity to
Covid, after nearly three years of trying to eliminate the virus. China has not
yet approved mRNA vaccines, proven to be more effective, for public use.
National
health officials said on Tuesday that China would respond to “urgent concerns”
raised by the public and that Covid rules should be implemented more flexibly,
according to each region’s conditions.
Hours later
in Zhengzhou, the site of a Foxconn factory that makes Apple iPhones and has
been the scene of worker unrest, officials announced the “orderly” resumption
of business, including at supermarkets, gyms and restaurants. However, they
also published a long list of buildings that would remain under lockdown.
On
Wednesday, health authorities in Shanghai ordered subordinate units to
stockpile at least 60 days’ worth of anti-epidemic materials, prompting rumours
of a pending return to the lengthy lockdown the city was under from March until
June. Shanghai Disneyland was closed again on Tuesday, only four days after
reopening following a Covid-related shutdown.
In a sign
of official concern, the Communist party’s central political and legal affairs
commission, which oversees all domestic law enforcement in China, met on
Tuesday. Its members blamed “infiltration and sabotage” by “hostile forces” and
called for a crackdown, according to a readout of a meeting in the state news
agency Xinhua.
Residents
of at least one compound in Guangzhou were allegedly told by building managers
that Taiwanese and American-paid trolls had “infiltrated the homeowner [chat]
groups of various residential areas, inciting the people to resist the epidemic
prevention policy”.
Screenshots
of the message, seen by the Guardian, warned against attending any protests and
urged people to report any neighbours making inflammatory remarks to national
security agencies. A resident of that compound said friends elsewhere in the
city had received the same message.
Chinese
authorities often blame discontent on “foreign forces”, although the claim is
likely to be shrugged off by many people in China frustrated by the fierce
restrictions deployed to try to keep Covid out of the country. One weekend
protest video showed a sarcastic crowd asking whether accusations about
“foreign forces” referred to Marx and Engels, the fathers of communism, whose
works still feature on the Chinese syllabus.
The
protests appear to have blindsided authorities. The foreign ministry
spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, a champion of hyper-aggressive “wolf-warrior”
diplomacy, was rendered briefly speechless on Tuesday by a question about
whether the government would consider changing course on Covid after the
demonstrations.
China’s
zero-Covid policy has helped keep case numbers lower than those of the US and
other major countries, but global health experts including the head of the
World Health Organization (WHO) increasingly say it is unsustainable. China
dismissed the remarks as irresponsible.
Beijing
needs to make its approach “very targeted” to reduce economic disruption, the
head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) told the Associated Press in an
interview on Tuesday. “We see the importance of moving away from massive
lockdowns,” said the IMF managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, in Berlin.
“So that targeting allows to contain the spread of Covid without significant
economic costs.”
Economists
and health experts, however, warn that Beijing cannot relax controls that keep
most travellers out of China until tens of millions of older people are
vaccinated. They say that means zero-Covid controls might not end for another
year.
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