Chinese universities sent students home and police fanned out in Beijing and Shanghai to prevent more protests Tuesday after crowds angered by severe anti-virus restrictions called for leader Xi Jinping to resign in the biggest show of public dissent in decades.
Authorities have eased some controls after demonstrations in at least eight mainland cities and Hong Kong — but maintained they would stick to a “zero-COVID” strategy that has confined millions of people to their homes for months at a time. Security forces have detained an unknown number of people and stepped up surveillance.
Beijing Forestry University also said it would arrange for students to return home. It said its faculty and students all tested negative for the virus.Authorities hope to “defuse the situation” by clearing out campuses, said Dali Yang, an expert on Chinese politics at the University of Chicago.Police appeared to be trying to keep their crackdown out of sight, possibly to avoid drawing attention to the scale of the protests or encouraging others.
In Beijing, police on Monday visited a resident who attended a protest the previous night, according to a friend who refused to be identified for fear of retaliation. He said the police questioned the resident and warned him not to go to more protests. “We see the importance of moving away from massive lockdowns,” IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said in Berlin. "So that targeting allows to contain the spread of COVID without significant economic costs.”
The protests over the weekend were sparked by anger over the deaths of at least 10 people in a fire in China's far west last week that prompted angry questions online about whether firefighters or victims trying to escape were blocked by anti-virus controls. Media freedom “is something very, very much at the heart of the U.K.’s belief system,” said Foreign Secretary James Cleverly.
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