A year after the historic demonstrations against China’s anti-covid policy, which caught authorities off guard in Shanghai, it is impossible to erase the memory of the protests from the memories of many participants.
With repeated unannounced confinements and almost daily large-scale PCR tests, “zero covid” measures disrupted the daily lives of Chinese people for almost three years, until the end of 2022.
A fatal fire in Ürümqi (Xinjiang, northwest China), where health restrictions may have weakened emergency services, triggered demonstrations a year ago of a magnitude not seen since 1989.
On the night of November 26th to 27th, 2022, hundreds of people celebrated a vigil in honor of the ten victims on Wulumuqi Street in Shanghai, the name in Mandarin for the city of Ürümqi.
“The atmosphere was sad, but also stimulating,” recalls Li, a protester whose name has been changed for security reasons.
The meeting turned into calls for an end to the “zero covid” policy and the resignation of President Xi Jinping – and even for the deposition of the Communist Party in power –, something unusual in China.
Since then and after the restrictions were lifted, “everyone seems to have turned the page, no one talks about it”, says the young woman aged around 20 to AFP.
But “when I think about it, I still feel the suffocation,” he says.
As her birthday approached, the police visited her and warned her not to speak out.
– “Rhetoric against the regime” –
This spontaneous demonstration later spread to several cities, including Guangzhou (center), Chengdu (southwest) and Beijing, despite the imposing police presence and surveillance cameras.
The participants, mainly between 18 and 35 years old, carried white sheets of paper to materialize the censorship.
“It is not surprising that demonstrations broke out in the face of zero covid restrictions”, says China expert Diana Fu, from the University of Toronto, in Canada.
What was surprising, however, “was the brutal rhetoric against the regime,” adds Fu, an especially sensitive topic that exposes participants to strong reprisals.
“I thought I could live without [liberdade de expressão]since it didn’t affect my daily life”, but everything changed with Covid, explains Li.
However, the majority of participants did not want “political reforms”, said researcher Chenchen Zhang, from the University of Durham (United Kingdom).
Huang Yicheng, 27, was briefly detained by police before fleeing to Germany.
“The proposal was like a strong tide,” he says. But when health restrictions were lifted, “we found ourselves standing on the shore, like fish (when the water returns), he laments.
– Lift restrictions –
According to protester Li, the police did not hesitate to use force on the second night of protests in Shanghai. A week later, she was called into a police station.
They showed him a photo of himself at the demonstration and asked him to “describe what he had done and why he was there.”
Huan Yicheng claims that he was dragged away by the police and that he saw how many women were attacked that night.
One hundred people were arrested across the country following the demonstrations, estimates William Nee, from the organization Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD). Most were released.
The Chinese Ministry of Public Security did not respond to AFP.
Ten days after the demonstrations began, China eased part of its anti-covid measures, a change that Li and Huan Yicheng attribute to its mobilization.
China lifted most of its health restrictions and progressively reopened its borders in January 2023.