Covid-free China: Guangzhou residents ‘revolt’ over tough restrictions


Hong Kong
CNN

According to videos and images circulating on social media, residents under Covid quarantine in China’s southern manufacturing hub of Guangzhou tore down barriers meant to restrict their access to their homes and took to the streets in defiance of strictly enforced local orders.

Some images show large crowds of people cheering and rushing through toppled barriers and filling the streets after dark in the city’s Haizhu area, which has been under increasingly stringent restrictions since Nov. 5 as it is the epicenter of the city’s ongoing Covid outbreak.

The clatter of falling metal railings resounds throughout the neighborhood and mingles with screams of applause in the footage, in scenes that many social media users say took place on the streets of the neighborhood late Monday night.

In one video, Covid workers in protective medical clothing can be seen standing by as barriers come down and trying to talk to people on the streets. “They are disgusting,” a female voice is heard in the background of one of the videos. CNN tied the images to the Haizhu area but was unable to independently verify them.

It is unclear how many people participated in the protest and how long it lasted. The related posts were quickly removed from the Chinese internet by censors.

When CNN contacted the Haizhu County government agency’s phone line, the phone operator said the area was still “pretty much shut down.”

When asked if there were protests in recent days, the operator refused to answer.

A public protest – an extremely rare event in China, where dissent is tightly controlled by the authorities – seems to be another sign of growing public anger and desperation at the government’s actions. strict zero covid policy.

The scenes in Guangzhou, where more than 5,100 new Covid cases, the vast majority of which are asymptomatic, were reported Tuesday, come as Beijing’s relentless drive to eradicate the spread of the virus is facing sustainability issues amid rapidly spreading new variants.

Residents on the streets of Guangzhou appear to have defied Covid restrictions.

China is experiencing a surge in infections across the country, this time fueled by simultaneous outbreaks in multiple cities where control measures are pushing residents and local authorities to breaking point.

On Tuesday, China’s National Health Commission reported more than 17,772 new Covid cases nationwide, the highest since April 2021, with more than a quarter of them in Guangzhou, a city of 19 million people.

Last week, the city closed three districts, including Haizhu, in an attempt to stop the spread by imposing many restrictions on the movement of residents and business activity. This was followed in recent days by additional measures against areas designated as “high risk”.

Zhang Yi, deputy director of the Guangzhou Municipal Health Commission, said at a press conference on Monday that “pandemic containment measures” will be “strengthened” – a veiled reference to the lockdown – in all areas of Liwan and Panyu, as well as parts of Haizhu. and Yuexiu districts.

The rising number of cases and the accompanying control measures have pushed more Chinese to question the costs about the brute-force measures taken by the authorities to root out cases, which include mandatory quarantines of close contacts of Covid patients, mass testing, and lockdowns that can result in people staying in their neighborhoods, neighborhoods or apartments – sometimes for months.

Senior officials in Beijing, including Chinese leader Xi Jinping, have vowed that the measures must be balanced with economic and social interests. Authorities last week revised policyincluding avoiding unnecessary mass testing and overzealous classification of restricted “high risk” areas.

They have also largely abandoned the quarantine of secondary close contacts and reduced the amount of time close contacts must spend in central quarantine — all of the changes officials are pushing for are not easing, but refinement of policy.

These measures were taken as Xi prepared for week of diplomacy attending summits in Southeast Asia as a sign that China is ready to return to the global stage, and Xi met face-to-face with key Western leaders this month for the first time since the start of the pandemic.

But for citizens left at home who are trapped in lockdown, recurring challenges, such as access to fast medical care or enough food and supplies, or the loss of jobs and income, have again and again led to hardships and tragedies, including numerous deaths It is believed that this is due to the delay in access to medical care.

The Haizhu district in Guangzhou, where footage shows nightly protests, is home to many migrant workers living in densely built homes in areas known as “urban villages.”

Their circumstances may exacerbate the difficulties of reprisals, as the true number of residents in need of supplies in a given residential building may not be clear to the officials delivering the goods. There is also no possibility of remote work to save income for those who are employed in factories and construction sites.

In messages posted on social media, monitors noted that they heard Haizhu residents, originally from outside Guangzhou, plead with officials for help, such as rent compensation and free supplies.

In a video shared on social media, a man can be heard shouting, “We Hubei people are hungry! We in Hubei Province want to be printed!” referring to another province in China where many of the migrant workers in the area come from. He is part of a crowd gathered in front of Covid workers in hazmat suits.

In a separate clip of the same scene, another man asks the workers, “If your parents were sick, how would you feel? If your children had a fever and could not get (to the hospital), how would you feel?”

In another video, people can be heard shouting out their frustration and desperation to a man who calls himself the district director and says he wants to solve their problems. One resident rushes forward to say that because they are not locals, they queue for hours for Covid-19 testing and the meat sold to them by the government has gone bad while they cannot reach local support hotlines .

“No one came to explain and the community office phone line is always busy. And our landlord doesn’t care if we live or die. What should we do?” the resident says, while the rest of the crowd begin to shout in unison: “Print! Print!”

At a city press conference on Monday, a spokesman for the Haizhu district acknowledged criticism that the restrictions could have been announced earlier and with more clarity on the areas affected by the measures.

“We also realized many of our shortcomings,” said Su Mingqing, deputy head of Haizhu District.