Shanghai citizens shout ‘Step Down, Xi Jinping and Communist Party’

Protests against China's COVID-19 lockdown are continuing in Chinese cities, including Beijing and Shanghai. On Saturday, a large-scale demonstration took place in downtown Shanghai, with citizens chanting, “Step down, Xi Jinping! Step down, Communist Party!" Major global media outlets such as CNN, Reuters, and the BBC reported that “anger and protests against the COVID-19 quarantine policy are spreading throughout China.” Local Chinese reported to The Dong-A Ilbo that citizens' antipathy toward "Zero COVID-19," a blockade policy that has been maintained for three years to prevent the spread of the virus, is spreading.

According to Western media, such as Bloomberg, and Taiwanese media, such as Ziyu, on Sunday, citizens took to the streets of Urumqi Middle Road from the night of Saturday until the early morning of Sunday to protest the death of 10 citizens of Urumqi, the largest city in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region in western China. They died in a fire accident that occurred on the same day. The Associated Press and Reuters reported the number of protesters was in the thousands, while Bloomberg put them in the hundreds. There are many Uyghurs, a minority people, living on the Urumqi Middle Road.

Urumqi was in a prolonged lockdown to prevent the spread of COVID-19 at the time of the fire. Claims that the number of deaths increased as it took more time for the fire authorities to enter the site due to various blockout installations spread rapidly on social media.

In a video posted on Twitter and other platforms, protesters in Shanghai gathered in the streets with candles lit and shouted “No dictatorship” and “Enforce democracy” in agitated voices. Bloomberg evaluated the Shanghai protest as “the largest anti-government street demonstration since the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy protest.”


Ki-Yong Kim kky@donga.com