The Chinese Communist Party, through its state propaganda outlets, insisted that it would not relent on its brutal lockdown and quarantine policies known as “zero Covid” on Monday, apparently responding to, but not acknowledging, protests in major cities nationwide over the weekend.
Beijing has insisted on “zero Covid” for nearly three years, abruptly trapping people in their homes and often leaving them without food or basic medicine. The Chinese government announced its first deaths attributed to a Chinese coronavirus infection in six months last week – three people over the age of 87 – meaning that, by the regime’s own tally, more people have died as a result of lockdowns, forced internment in quarantine camps, and other “zero Covid” policies than by Chinese coronavirus infections.
Chinese citizens have staged protests, some of them violent, against the policies since at least March 2020, when a group of people in Hubei province – where Wuhan, the origin city of the virus, is located – brawled with police and overturned police cars in an attempt to leave their province. The NGO Freedom House observed in a report this month that protests have slowly increased in frequency until becoming a “daily” occurrence this year.
