The continued Covid lockdowns in China are causing an increase in public resentment, and some citizens in Guangzhou, one of the nation’s largest cities, have staged unusual rallies against the strict regulations.
Hundreds of protesters can be seen smashing through police barriers and marching in the streets in footage that have been making the rounds on social media from Guangzhou’s Haizhu district, which has been under lockdown since late last month.
According to the Hong Kong Economic Journal, the protests took place in a number of “urban villages,” mostly in the less affluent areas where migrant workers reside.
According to the report, the local government dispatched numerous police vehicles to the demonstrations.
After over three years of limitations under the country’s Covid Zero policy, Chinese people, especially those in metropolitan areas, are getting more and more agitated.
Even as authorities relax some restrictions, such as lowering the mandated quarantine period for incoming tourists and doing away with a system where airlines are fined for transporting infected passengers, lockdowns don’t appear to be going away anytime soon.
One of the main complaints made by those confined to their houses to stop outbreaks is the lack of food and the difficulties in receiving prompt medical care.
On Weibo and WeChat, two of the biggest social media platforms in China, where online discourse is sometimes restricted to suppress public opinion, there were relatively few posts describing the protests, which some people have referred to as riots.
As of Tuesday morning, posts that had previously been viewable on Weibo were no longer there, although hashtags like “Guangzhou Haizhu district riot” and “Haizhu riot” were still visible.
Panyu and Liwan in Guangzhou have been closed down due to an increase in new illnesses of 5,124 on Monday.
The Paper cited a Monday night internal meeting where Huang Kunming, the Communist Party chairman of Guangdong, the province that includes Guangzhou, instructed officials to eradicate the virus in communities “as quickly as feasible.”
The biggest number of new Covid cases reported from China since late April was over 17,000 on Monday.
While Guangzhou is responsible for the majority of them, the megacity of Chongqing in the southwest also reported an increase to 2,948 instances.
Even as the country’s continued adherence to Covid Zero is called into question by the growing caseloads, state media have continued to make this claim.