Police have stopped and searched people at the sites of protests in Shanghai and Beijing, after crowds there — and in other Chinese cities — demonstrated against stringent COVID-19 measures that have disrupted lives three years into the pandemic.
A large presence of officers in Beijing on Monday night prevented a repeat of the previous evening, which saw rare open dissent against President Xi Jinping's ongoing COVID-zero restrictions.
The police response comes after protests erupted across 17 provinces over the weekend, with protesters calling for an end to constant PCR testing and lockdowns.
However, the Chinese government is not stepping back from its COVID-zero drive.
They have said a recent slight loosening of measures would be enough.
From the streets of several Chinese cities to dozens of university campuses, protesters made a show of civil disobedience, which was unprecedented since leader Xi Jinping assumed power a decade ago.
During his tenure, Mr Xi has overseen the quashing of dissent and the expansion of a high-tech social surveillance system that has made protest more difficult, and risky.
"What we object to is these restrictions on people's rights in the name of virus prevention, and the restrictions on individual freedom and people's livelihoods," Jason Sun, a college student in Shanghai, said.
There was no sign of new protests on Monday, local time, in Beijing nor Shanghai, however, dozens of police were in the areas where the demonstrations took place.
Police search phones for VPNs, Telegram apps
Police have been asking people for their phones to check if they had virtual private networks (VPNs) and the Telegram app, which has been used by weekend protesters, residents and social media users said.
VPNs are illegal for most people in China, while the Telegram app is blocked from China's internet.
Asked about widespread anger over China's zero-COVID policy, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters: "What you mentioned does not reflect what actually happened.
"We believe that, with the leadership of the Communist Party of China, and [the] cooperation and support of the Chinese people, our fight against COVID-19 will be successful."
Students sent home from universities
Chinese universities are sending students home as anti-virus controls are tightened and the government tries to prevent more protests.
Tsinghua University, Mr Xi's alma mater, where students protested on Sunday, and other schools in Beijing and the southern province of Guangdong said they were protecting students from COVID-19.
But dispersing them to far-flung home towns also reduces the likelihood of more activism following protests at campuses last weekend.
Some universities arranged buses to take students to train stations.
They said classes and final exams would be conducted online.
"We will arrange for willing students to return to their home towns," Beijing Forestry University said on its website.
It said its faculty and students all tested negative for the virus.
In Hong Kong, about 50 students from mainland China protested on Monday at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in a show of support for people on the mainland.
They lit candles and chanted, "no PCR tests but freedom" and "oppose dictatorship, don't be slaves".
COVID-zero backlash
The backlash against COVID-19 curbs is a setback for China's efforts to eradicate the virus, which is infecting record numbers after large parts of the population have sacrificed income, mobility and mental health to prevent it from spreading.
The zero-COVID policy has kept China's official death toll in the thousands, against more than a million in the United States, but has come at the cost of confining many millions to long spells at home, bringing extensive disruption and damage to the world's second-largest economy.
Abandoning the restrictions would mean rolling back a policy championed by Mr Xi.
It would also risk overwhelming hospitals and lead to widespread illness and deaths in a country with hundreds of millions of elderly and low levels of immunity to COVID,-19 experts say.
State media did not mention the protests, instead urged citizens in editorials to stick to COVID-19 rules.
Many analysts say China is unlikely to re-open before March or April, and that it needs an effective vaccination campaign before that.
"The demonstrations do not imminently threaten the existing political order, but they do mean the current COVID policy mix is no longer politically sustainable," analysts at Gavekal Dragonomics said.
"The question now is what re-opening will look like. The answer is: slow, incremental and messy."he said.
Urumqi fire
The catalyst for the protests was an apartment fire last week in the western city of Urumqi, which killed 10 people.
Many speculated that COVID-19 curbs in the city — parts of which had been under lockdown for 100 days — had hindered rescue and escape, which city officials denied.
Crowds in Urumqi took to the street on Friday. Over the weekend, protesters in cities including Wuhan and Lanzhou overturned COVID-19 testing facilities, while students gathered on campuses across China.
Demonstrations have also been held in at least a dozen cities around the world in solidarity.
About 50 students sang at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and some lit candles in a show of support for those in mainland cities.
Hiding their faces to avoid official retaliation, the students chanted, "No PCR tests but freedom!" and "Oppose dictatorship, don't be slaves!"
The gathering and a similar one elsewhere in Hong Kong were the biggest protests there in more than a year, under rules imposed to crush a pro-democracy movement in the territory, which is Chinese but has a separate legal system from the mainland.
"I've wanted to speak up for a long time, but I did not get the chance to," said James Cai — a 29-year-old from Shanghai who attended a Hong Kong protest and held up a piece of white paper, a symbol of defiance against the ruling party's pervasive censorship.
"If people in the mainland can't tolerate it anymore, then I cannot as well."
Reuters/ABC
