Police tighten security in Shanghai after two nights of protests

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Chinese police have barricaded a street in Shanghai where protesters have gathered for the last two nights in anticipation of further rallies against the government’s rigid zero-Covid policies.

Since Friday, a wave of protests has spread across multiple cities in China, prompted by the death of 10 people in a building fire in Urumqi in Xinjiang. Much of the region had been under lockdown for more than three months, and people blamed the lockdown for the deaths.

Gatherings held to protest or to mourn the victims were held in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and other major Chinese cities on Saturday and Sunday, as well as dozens of university campuses, with some police clashes and detentions in Shanghai.

Protesters demanded an end to lockdowns, while some groups decried censorship and called for democracy and an end to the rule of Xi Jinping. Most protests were peaceful. There were some clashes with police in Shanghai, and protesters in Wuhan pushed over pandemic barriers.

On Monday, authorities erected large blue barriers along Shanghai’s Middle Urumqi Road, where protesters had gathered on Saturday and Sunday. There was a heavy police presence according to people nearby and footage shared online, in an apparent effort to prevent further protests. Edward Lawrence, a BBC journalist who was allegedly detained and beaten by police on Sunday, filmed bystanders having their photos forcibly deleted by police on Monday.

At Beijing’s elite Tsinghua University, where large protests were held on Sunday, school authorities on Monday announced a student symposium on the pandemic, and a free bus to help students get home early for the holidays. The announcement was greeted with some scepticism, given the term is not over yet.

“The school is afraid that passionate youths will make trouble, so the students are given an early holiday.” said one Weibo online commenter. “They are afraid of the student movement,” said another.

The extraordinary acts of civil disobedience – which observers have said are the most significant protests seen in China for decades – have demonstrated a growing frustration and scepticism with the ruling Communist party’s commitment to zero-Covid. A series of incidents related to the enforcement of the policy, including a bus crash that killed 27 people being taken to quarantine, and numerous suicides and other deaths linked to lockdowns and restrictions, have tested people’s tolerance. Last Thursday’s fire appears to have been a final straw for many.

The widespread protests saw prolific use of blank sheets of paper to represent the dissent Chinese people are largely unable to safely express. In one shared video apparently showing a crowd at Beijing’s Liangma bridge, a man clad in white says “we’ll always support the Communist party, but we want democracy and freedom!” as he holds up a blank piece of paper.

Many protests have heard demands for democracy and rule of law, as well as press freedom and an end to online censorship. There have also been chants echoing the slogans displayed by the Beijing Sitong bridge protester on the eve of last month’s Communist party congress political meeting.

In video showing a crowd that had gathered on Wuyuan Road in Shanghai’s Xuhui district, people cheer and a clap as a woman’s voice shouts out: “We want respect, not lies. We want reform, not a cultural revolution. We want a vote, not a leader. We want to be citizens, not slaves.”

Asked about the Urumqi fire at a regular press conference on Monday, a spokesman for the ministry of foreign affairs said “forces with ulterior motives” were linking the fire with zero-Covid measures.

Online discussion of the protests has been strictly censored, particularly on social media platforms such as Weibo, but information and evidence of the protests are still being shared on more private channels like WeChat.

On Twitter, which is banned in China but has been a key site of reposted protest material, Chinese-language hashtags are being flooded by suspected state actors with pornographic and escort service posts.

Chinese state media has not mentioned the protests at all.

Additional research by Chi Hui Lin