Nationwide protests against President Xi Jinping’s harsh zero-tolerance approach to the pandemic appear to have forced him to reconsider Beijing’s strict approach, as they could relax measures.
Protestors Make Progress As Xi Jinping’s Harsh Zero-Covid Policy Could Be Relaxed
This is a very significant step in light of the demands, with protestors wanting Xi to step down. The Chinese authorities attempted to divert attention by using novel tactics, such as censoring maskless crowd members from their coverage of the Qatar World Cup.
Meanwhile, other reports have suggested that the government has used spam bots on Twitter in order to prevent people from searching the names of the cities where the protests have allegedly been happening.
Users instead were bombed with escort services. With that being said, the government has had no choice but to change tactics. Vice Premier Sun Chunlan spoke about how improved vaccination rates meant that a new approach was needed.
And in the process of doing so, she failed to mention the notorious zero-covid policy. An analyst, therefore, suggested the following: “[This] could signal that China is beginning to consider the end of its stringent zero-Covid policy.
“We believe that Chinese authorities are shifting to a ‘living with Covid’ stance, as reflected in new rules that allow people to do ‘home isolation’ instead of being ferried away to quarantine facilities.”
Nevertheless, is this too late? The protests that have swept the country have been the largest since the 1989 Tiananmen Squaremassacre where many people lost their lives.
And there is a similar feeling that if the demands of the protesters are not met, to the point where Xi does not step down, then there could be a similar period of violence that engulfs the country.
Time will tell how things progress moving forward, but based on what we have seen so far, things are looking ominous for Xi. So there you have it folks. What did you think about this? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
