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Anger over lockdowns escalate in China, calls for Xi to step down

Protesters angered by strict anti-virus measures called for China’s powerful leader to resign, an unprecedented rebuke as authorities in at least eight cities struggled to suppress demonstrations Sunday that represent a rare direct challenge to the ruling Communist Party.

Police using pepper spray drove away demonstrators in Shanghai who called for Xi Jinping to step down and an end to one-party rule, but hours later people rallied again in the same spot. Police again broke up the demonstration, and a reporter saw protesters under arrest being driven away in a bus.

The protests — which began Friday and have spread to cities including the capital, Beijing, and dozens of university campuses — are the most widespread show of opposition to the ruling party in decades.

In a video of the protest in Shanghai chants against Xi, the most powerful leader since at least the 1980s, and the Chinese Communist Party sounded loud and clear: “Xi Jinping! Step down! CCP! Step down!”

Three years after the virus emerged, China is the only major country still trying to stop transmission of COVID-19. Its ‘zero COVID’ strategy has suspended access to neighbourhoods for weeks at a time. Some cities carry out daily virus tests on millions of residents.

That has kept China’s infection numbers lower than those in the United States and other major countries, but public acceptance has been wearing thin. People who are quarantined at home in some areas say they lack food and medicine. The ruling party faced public anger following the deaths of two children whose parents said anti-virus controls hampered efforts to get medical help.

The current protests erupted after a fire broke out Thursday and killed at least 10 people in an apartment building in the city of Urumqi in the northwest, where some have been locked in their homes for four months. That prompted an outpouring of angry questions online about whether firefighters or people trying to escape were blocked by locked doors or other restrictions.

About 300 demonstrators gathered late Saturday in Shanghai, most of whose 25 million people were confined to their homes for almost two months starting in late March.

On a street named after Urumqi, one group of protesters brought candles, flowers and signs honouring those who died in the blaze. Another group, according to a protester who insisted on anonymity, was more active, shouting slogans and singing the national anthem.

That protester and another, who gave only his family name, Zhao, confirmed the chants against Xi, who has awarded himself a third five-year term as leader of the ruling party and who some expect to try to stay in power for life.

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Barriers erected in Shanghai

Shanghai authorities put up barriers on Monday around a city centre area where hundreds of people protested over the weekend.

From the streets of Shanghai and Beijing to university campuses, protesters made a show of civil disobedience unprecedented since leader Xi Jinping assumed power a decade ago to oversee the quashing of dissent and establishment of an extensive high-tech social surveillance system.

Protest in Tokyo

A large crowd of people in Tokyo on Sunday held a vigil for victims of an Urumqi fire, but the gathering turned into a protest against China’s leadership and its restrictive coronavirus curbs.

Around a hundred people holding signs near the exit of Shinjuku railway station, some taking turns to give speeches calling for China’s President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party to step down and singing the Chinese national anthem. The protesters were mostly young people in their twenties and thirties from China and some were international students, according to an eyewitness.

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