While the strong police presence and the fencing of some streets in Beijing or Shanghai prevent a repeat of the anti-covid protests that shook several Chinese cities over the weekend, the country's authorities are beginning to criticize themselves. A senior Chinese health official said today that public complaints about anti-covid measures are due to an overzealous implementation of the restrictions, especially when they are applied with a one-size-fits-all approach, rather than about the measures. In themselves.
"The problems highlighted by the public are not aimed at the prevention and control of the epidemic itself, but focus on the simplification of prevention and control measures," said Cheng Youquan, supervisor of the National Prevention and Control Administration. Disease Control, during a media briefing. They have begun to investigate the discontents who participated in the high-profile demonstrations, in which they demanded an end to the restrictions that have gripped their lives for three years.
When asked if the recent protests will cause the authorities to reconsider their zero covid strategy, the spokesman for the National Health Commission, Mi Feng, did not give any clues in that regard, but did acknowledge that the closures have affected the "life normal” of people and their “psychology”, so Beijing will continue to “adjust” its position to reduce its impact on society and the economy.
But despite admitting mistakes, Beijing continues to crack down on the protests. The country's authorities have begun to investigate the discontents who participated in the well-known demonstrations, in which they demanded an end to the restrictions that have gripped their lives for three years.
In one such case, a person identifying himself as a police officer asked a Beijing protester to report to a police station on Tuesday to hand over a written record of his activities on Sunday night, Reuters reported. That day, dozens of people gathered on the banks of the Liangma River in the capital to show blank sheets of paper, the symbol of these protests, and shout slogans such as "no more confinements" or "we don't want PCR, we want freedom."
In another similar case, a student was contacted by his university and asked if he had been present in the area where the critics gathered and to provide a written account of his activities. "We are all deleting our chat history," another protester from the capital told the British agency. “The police came to check the identity of one of my friends and then took her away. We do not know why. A few hours later she was released,” he added.
For her part, a woman told how she and five other friends who participated in the rallies received calls from the police yesterday demanding information about their latest movements. "He said my name and asked me if I went to the Liangma River last night ... He asked me how many people were there, what time I went or how I found out," she told Agence France Press.
There are also testimonies that ensure that the police have been checking the phones of passersby who pass through some areas where it was rumored that there could be new concentrations to check if they had installed some type of virtual private network (VPN, which allows you to circumvent censorship to access to applications prohibited in the country) or the Telegram messaging application, indicated as one of the channels used to organize the protests.
Likewise, there is evidence that several universities are offering facilities to their students so that they return home early before the holidays. This is the case of the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing, Xi's 'alma mater' and witness last Sunday to a large student mobilization, and other centers in the capital or Guangzhou, which justified their decision as a way to protect their students. against covid.
However, many received his decision with skepticism, after which they see an attempt to deactivate future mobilizations “They fear that young people will cause problems, that's why they give them early vacations. They are afraid of the student movement," said one of the comments posted on Weibo, the Chinese Twitter.
For its part, censorship continues to work at full speed to eliminate references to displays of popular discontent. On Weibo, his scissors excluded from the list of trends the label in which the death of 10 people in a confined fire in Urumqi was discussed, an event that unleashed a wave of national indignation and was the trigger for the recent mobilizations .
After that, some netizens posted articles on Wechat that only consisted of words like “fine”, “yes” or “okay”, protesting the systematic removal of content critical of the authorities' performance. In fact, one of the symbols of the protests is being the blank pages, which precisely represent the discontent of citizens for not being able to express their opinions.
During today's press conference, Chinese health officials also assured that they will work to accelerate vaccination among the elderly, one of the most vulnerable groups but also one of the most reluctant to inoculate, but did not explain how they will convince them.
More than 90% of the 1.4 billion Chinese people are vaccinated, a high percentage worldwide. However, these figures progressively decrease as the ages of the vaccinated groups increase, especially among the elderly. The situation of those over 80 years of age is especially worrying, since only 65.8% of them are vaccinated and only 40% have received a booster dose.
