Crowds of residents of Guangzhou, the industrial metropolis in southern China, escaped a mandatory lockdown and clashed with police as anger over tough coronavirus restrictions boiled over.
Dramatic footage shows some overturning a police vehicle and knocking down Covid control barriers. Riot teams have now been deployed to the area.
This follows Guangzhou’s worst Covid outbreak since the pandemic began.
Amid poor economic numbers, China’s zero Covid policy is under strain.
Tensions have been building in the city’s Haizhu district, subject to stay-at-home orders.
The area is home to many poor itinerant workers. They have complained of not getting paid if they can’t show up for work, food shortages and soaring prices as they live under Covid lockdowns.
For several nights they argued with the white-clad Covid prevention officials, and then on Monday night, anger suddenly exploded in the streets of Guangzhou with a massive act of defiance.
Again, unsubstantiated rumours played a role. Stories have spread that testing companies are rigging PCR results to increase the number of infections to make more money artificially.
In the north of the country, the rumor of the coronavirus is also increasing the pressure.
Hebei provincial officials announced that the city of Shijiazhuang would stop mass testing. But it led to speculation that the population would be used, like a guinea pig, to monitor what would happen if the virus spread unchecked.
A discussion about it appeared on social media platforms under the hashtag #ShijiazhuangCovidprevention.
Many panicked locals stockpiled Chinese medicine that would help fight Covid infection. The city’s supplies would be nearly exhausted at the moment.
A similar viral rumour led two weeks ago to the mass escape of workers from the Foxconn complex in the central city of Zhengzhou, which hit Apple’s global iPhone supply.
Local governments across China struggle to maintain a zero-Covid approach without trashing their economies. The latest official factory production and retail sales figures show the crushing impact of the pandemic and the government’s policy response to it.
No province has reported zero cases in recent days.
Around 20 million people in the heart of China’s western megalopolis of Chongqing have been placed under a type of lockdown that people ironically call “voluntary static management”. Indeed, despite no official announcement, community leaders told them to stay indoors.
At the beginning of this week, Beijing’s Chaoyang district officials decided to close many street-side testing booths and move them into housing compounds. There was a sudden cut in the number of PCR stations. The problem is that many office buildings require a daily result, or you can’t enter.
So at the open booths, the queues were enormous.
From the workers stuck in Tibet who protested against leaving Lhasa to the lockdown of the entire region of Xinjiang, zero-Covid is not going smoothly.
A series of changes announced last week slightly toning down the rules were seen as a sign that more easing was possible down the road. But even if the government is considering this, it may not be soon enough.