China - what’s going on?

[MarshaBradyo]

Anyone following what’s going on. It seems Covid restrictions ongoing are unrealistic but more than that with general dissatisfaction

Interesting to see after many thought they’d got it right, but also I really feel for them

What do people think

A fire broke out in TianShan district in Urumqi, Xinjiang. The district is predominantly a Ughyur area.

It’s being reported that due to China’s strict lockdown measures (and arguably the treatment of Ughyurs in general), people were unable to escape the burning high rise building ie doors had been locked from the outside. The official death toll is 10 but this could be/is probably higher.

Across China, protests are now taking place against the lockdown measures and in support of those who lost their lives in Urumqi. Eg a protest broke out in Shanghai on ‘Urumqi Road’ - it’s being reported that government workers have removed the road sign. Protests have also been taking place at universities across the country, one of which Xi Jinping reportedly attended in his younger years (although whether he actually did graduate has been brought into question).

It’s unclear whether the protests will gather pace and continue or whether they will be quashed. Police have been out in force.

Thanks for informative post

I find the protests with blank signs / paper incredibly moving

There was talk of World Cup censored not showing crowds but this was refuted by spokesperson this morning

Thank you for your detailed post buddha.
Watching this unfold.

There's a limit to how long people can be made to live in the way the regime has been enforcing, even in a surveillance state like China. So I've been expecting some sort of pushback for a while, though not like this. I wish the protesters every success.

Sorry I should’ve also added there has been some other incidences which have been a precursor to the protests; a bus crash in Guizhou province reportedly taking people to a quarantine centre killed 27 people. This happened in September.

What is interesting (not the right word) is that these incidences have happened in some of the poorest provinces in China; protests are occurring in some of the richest provinces and cities.

The scale of the protests is difficult to ascertain. However the footage has shown some in Beijing, Shanghai to name a couple of well known cities. It is the protests across different cities and geographic regions that is significant.

Urumqi sits in a time zone 2 hours behind Beijing (but officially there is only one time zone in China - so eg you get up at official time 7am but it’s still pitch black out; it makes for some cold dark starts in winter). It is culturally very different to much of the rest of China.

For incidences in Urumqi to spur protests in the rest of China perhaps gives a form of unification that is the only kind of unification the CCP do not want.

What I don't understand is that, as a totalitarian regime, the government seems to have no qualms about locking people up with no notice and for indefinite periods but bizzarely haven't used those powers to just vaccinate everyone.

There does appear to have been some coercive practice, not that the Chinese have had the monopoly on that of course, but it's an interesting thought.

Maybe if the Sinovac had been more effective, we might have seen more of that happening. But the regime knows by now what that could and couldn't achieve, so it would be a very resource intensive and risky practice that wouldn't necessarily be justified by the reward. They would still be left with the problem of a population that hadn't had much covid exposure, a vaccine of limited effectiveness and a strain that cannot be contained without incredibly intrusive measures, all of which amount to a political and economic nightmare. It's probably not worth it.

My understanding is their vaccine isn’t very effective. However our vaccine also doesn’t stop people from catching covid so if the idea is zero covid in China then vaccination was never going to achieve that.

To add to what @SirMingeALot has said - when carrying out coercive measures across such a large country, both geopraphically and population size wise, the government walks a very fine line between protests erupting and population compliance.

Protests themselves aren’t completely rare in China but protests across the country haven’t been seen on this scale since Tiananmen.

Suppression sounds extreme. Poor people so hard

Poor people.
Because of China’s “zero covid” strategy there is actually no immunity except for vaccine immunity… and they have an ineffective vaccine.

Is it a matter of vaccine nationalism that they won't buy a more effective vaccine from abroad? I'd love to understand the vaccine hesitancy issue is anyone has insights.

It’s a good lesson in guarding digital privacy

I remember a lot of admiration over more draconian methods of control during pandemic

Soon the state there won’t have to do much to control the population beyond their phones

I was watching something the other day, the person talking said the vaccine that China developed is not as effective as the others. China does not want to 'loose face' by importing vaccines because they would have to admit something had gone wrong.

I'm sorry I don't have a reference, I think it was Sky, they do a thing about 'tomorrow's papers' late at night.

Obviously I have no idea if it is true.

I've read that it is. There's more in here.

link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12140-021-09382-x

That being said, even if China accessed the more effective vaccines, many of the problems would still remain. They have a vast population who don't all want to be vaccinated, to say the least, and there'd be significant logistical difficulties in rolling it out fast enough to outrun Omicron in a population without much prior immunity.

What baffles me is that Westerners are all in agreement that the Chinese government are not to be trusted and that they use all kinds of unsavoury methods to force their citizens to comply.

This has been the situation for as long as I can remember.

But then, Covid happened and we decide to firstly, believe everything they told us about Wuhan and the early days of the virus, and then, follow their methods of draconian lockdowns across the world.

I would like Western leaders to support China and perhaps ask them if we can somehow help deliver mRNA vaccines?

If this all kicks off massively, we are going to have a 2nd Russia on our hands and the world economy will be even more shot to pieces - which ultimately leads to loads more poor people dying globally.

The Chinese government need to change course and come up with a good plan. I would see this as huge uptake of mRNA vaccines amongst the elderly population. We should be helping them if we can. Not wait until the problem explodes.

@blue12345 - I actually think we need to work with these crazy leaders to help them save face in a way. The power they wield is so big it can destroy the world as we know it.
I actually believe if we had given Putin more of a place at the table years and years ago rather than just take all the dirty Money into London, we would not be where we are now. Xi Jinping - is the same kind of authoritarian 70 plus leader facing his own mortality. Best to let them go as benign heroes than extreme villains and work with them towards a more Westernised free life for all.

Because then they lose their "reason" to imprison them.

@Aleaiactaest - China have access to mRNA vaccines. All the Pfizer vaccines that were used in Hong Kong were imported through China. I think the problem is more than having an effective vaccine (although I totally agree that Sinovac is ineffective). We were living in Hong Kong when COVID started, and HK offered citizens a choice of Sinovac or Pfizer (can't remember what it's called). They had super clean, vast vaccination centres, really well organised, but extremely limited uptake. Part of this was because Hong Kongers were unable to protest against the government in any other way. The pro democracy protests had been shut down brutally and effectively, and a huge swathe of Hong Kongers pretty much saw refusing to be vaccinated as a silent protest against the government. Perhaps there's a bit of that in China too?

Indeed
but none of this is a surprise to you and me. I'm still beyond baffled at some of the posts about "why would govt want to control people".

I would like Western leaders to support China and perhaps ask them if we can somehow help deliver mRNA vaccines?
But this would be to admit that western vaccines are better than Chinese vaccines and Xi will never allow this because of the loss of face, his pride and his need for complete obedience outweighs any concern for the well-being of the people, to him they are merely possessions that he owns and controls.

@Sistanotcista - thank you for clarifying that. That is very interesting.

Do you think vaccine uptake would be greater in China if the government promised more freedoms once X amount of the population is vaccinated? Would they believe that? I also read somewhere that uptake amongst the key group (e.g vulnerable and very elderly) was far too low. In the Western World, we all understood that you have the vaccine so we get back to normal life as quickly as possible.

I'm also not sure how helpful it would be at this point.

While China would be in a better position now if they'd used Western vaccines not Sinovac, they still have quite low coverage, lots of reluctant people, not much previous exposure and a strain that can't be contained without spectacular levels of repression. It would be very difficult to try and outrun Omicron with vaccination, which is essentially what they would have to do.

I'm currently in Shanghai and have lived here for about five years now.

Aside from the Urumqi fire where the local authorities welded doors shut to prevent covid from spreading, the factory protests for Apple are partly what caused people to protest. However, the biggest one is the national broadcast of the World Cup - Chinese media refuse to show audiences whereas western media does. A lot of the public are not happy that people are being seen happy and without masks and just living life as normal whilst the mainland is the opposite.

We went from daily testing for covid to 4 times a week currently. There are a lot of increasing cases, and although they took street signs down due to "an increase in political unrest" there's no sign of this stopping. I've been taken away to quarantine just in September because someone in my building got into the lift without a mask on.

BBC journalist Ed Lawrence was detained Sunday evening here - the BBC shared that the authorities explained his arrest was to save him from the risk of covid - but there are images and videos of him as well as others being beaten as they're detained. If you have Instagram, search: shanghaiobserved- there are lots of materials here where you can see the situation right now: especially when they're doing mandatory phone checks looking for illegal apps like Instagram, Twitter, and telegram.