China Convulsed by Anti-Lockdown Protests; Demonstrators Make Unprecedented Demand for Government to Resign

People accustomed to Chinese communist rule, it turns out, have revolted against endless lockdowns before standard-issue Democrat Karen.

China has long pursued an extremely aggressive "Zero Covid" policy. Apart from being draconian and repressive, or what Democrats call Good Sound Science-Based Policy, this policy has also left China without any natural immunity covid. The more you pursue Zero Covid as a policy, the more necessary Zero Covid becomes.

But people don't care any longer.

The catalyst for the protests was a fire in a building in which people had been imprisoned for two months. Ten people died in that fire (that the government admits). The lockdown police are blamed for trapping the residents inside the burning tower. I mean: That seems obvious.

After a tumultuous weekend of nationwide protests things seemed to have slightly calmed down on Monday, but many here expect the protests to continue. On Sunday they had spread to some 20 provinces throughout China. The demonstrations over the country's "zero-COVID" policy and a deadly fire in a high-rise building in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province, that cost 10 people their lives seemed to have been the catalyst for many people in the communist nation to say enough is enough. The building had been in partial lockdown for nearly two months.

Over the weekend, things turned violent in several cities with protesters clashing with police. Videos posted online showed police attacking and carrying away some protesters. People have increasingly voiced their anger online.

On Saturday and into Sunday, people gathered in the city center of Shanghai to light candles for the victims of the deadly fire. Around midnight, the crowd had swelled to over a thousand people, chanting, "apologize," directed at the central government, "Xi Jinping, step down," and "Communist Party, step down."

AllahPundit just wrote a spicy blog post accusing the protesters of being anti-science conspiracy theorists and Trump-heads.

Such slogans aimed directly at Xi and his central leadership committee are unprecedented. Even during the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, protesters demanded democratic reform, not regime change.

....

Shortly after the fire, students throughout the country organized wakes for all the victims of the deadly fire and all others who have been victim to China's "zero-COVID" policy. In most universities, students who also have not been able to leave campus for months started putting up posters and spraying graffiti writing "rest in peace, people from Urumqi" and "we demand freedom."

Craig Singleton, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and an expert on China, told Fox News Digital that, "The tenuous trust that exists between the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people is starting to fray, and it is not entirely clear that Xi has any new ideas to turn the tide. That said, these latest demonstrations appear unlikely to seriously challenge the party's grip on power so long as they remain isolated and sporadic. More likely is that Xi will seek to appear responsive to the public's growing discontent while politically distancing himself from recent lockdown orders, in essence shifting the blame to local and provincial-level officials."

Sounds like Anthony Fau-Xi claiming, "I had nothing to do with school closures, you know."

Although photos and videos of the protests in Xinjiang were soon censored, people have come up with ways of avoiding censorship. Popular online songs include video clips of "Do You Hear the People Sing" from "Les Misérables." The song was deleted from Chinese streaming services years ago when protesters in Hong Kong adopted it as one of their protest anthems.

They're also playing Bob Marley's "Get Up, Stand Up."

Below, the CBC, which attacked anti-lockdown/mandate protesters in Ontario as violent racist fascists, is sympathetic to the protesters in China.

Just so long as the noise doesn't bother the ears of the Laptop Class.

posted by Ace at 12:00 PM

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