Depressed, powerless, angry: why frustration at China’s zero-Covid is spilling over | China

Victoria Li* has experienced several lockdowns since Covid emerged in China almost three years ago. Her experience as a Beijing prisoner made her feel powerless, angry, and depressed.

“Being stuck at home with my door sealed, I felt unmotivated to do anything,” she said. “I didn’t want to work, I didn’t want to study. Sometimes, I crept into my bed and cried,” said the lawyer, who is in her 20s.

Even when she wasn’t locked down, the severe restrictions disrupted her normal daily life.

Li was removed from all public places after a colleague tested positive. “I wasn’t able to enter the markets or the shops. I couldn’t go to the office,” she said. “It affected my work too – business was bad and my boss became bad tempered.” Longing for a normal life, Li has recently applied to emigrate to Canada.

As Beijing’s iron-fisted “dynamic zero-Covid” policy prepares to enter its third year, Li is one of millions across China who have reached the end of their patience. Many people began to question how much they had paid for a goal that was unattainable as the number of daily cases rose to an unprecedented high.

The national health commission reported Wednesday 31,444 newly transmitted cases. This is the highest daily number since the coronavirus first appeared in Wuhan, central China, in late 2019.

Although China’s case numbers are low compared with global figures, the authorities have insisted on a “war of annihilation” against the virus. China last week reported its first Covid deaths in six years. This has prompted a new round of lockdowns across the country.

The most obvious signs of deep-seated frustration and scepticism about the recent endless quarantines, mass testing, lockdowns and mass testing that the Chinese have endured are the rare public outbursts.

In videos shared on social mediaon Saturday, people in Ürümqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region, appeared to be angrily confronting officials after an apartment fire killed 10 people.

Last week, thousands of workers at an Apple iPhone factory in central China clashed with police and tore down barricades. Workers from Guangzhou, a southern Chinese city, had broken through the lockdown barriers to march on the streets the week before.

Recent weeks have seen an outpouring on social media of grief for a four month old baby who died after her father said that her medical care was delayed 12 hours due Covid curbs. In north-west China, a three year-old boy died of carbon monoxide poisoning. His father was prevented by Covid enforcers from taking him into a hospital.

After being separated from her husband and having been tested positive for HIV, a 32-year old mother of two committed suicide in Guangzhou’s quarantine center. Caixin, a well-respected financial publication, reported the story. However, it was quickly deleted from social media.

The public’s sense of scepticism over the effectiveness of the zero-tolerance approach is increasingly obvious too. Online, voices of disapproval or narratives that diverge from official policy are quickly removed.

One of those was a social media post that asked 10 tough questions about the authorities’ handling of the pandemic. “Historically, have any flu viruses ever been wiped out? How can the coronavirus be eliminated? What price should we pay? What is the point of rounds and rounds of PCR tests?” it asked.

Another post gave tongue-in-cheek answers to the questions, including: “This is not what you should ask”; “This is not what you know”; and “These are dangerous thoughts.”

Chinese officials announced on 11/11 that they would reduce quarantine time and loosen some restrictions. Local officials were told to refrain from overenforcement of anti-virus policies, but confusingly, it also insisted that China’s “war” against the pandemic remains firmly in place.

Shijiazhuang is a city of over 11 million people located about 180 miles from the capital. This was once rumoured to be a test case for Covid restrictions being lifted. It was opened, but it was again closed nine days later as the number of daily cases rose to an all-time high.

Observers say no matter what the central government says, the Covid restrictions are unlikely to be relaxed in reality, because China’s top-down power structure means local officials would not shy away from overstrict implementation to avoid being blamed for cases surging.

Analysts believe that the restrictions will not be lifted soon. However, they also noted that these unrest incidents are unlikely pose a threat for a dictatorial government with the power to quickly crack down.

“The protests have stayed sporadic and unorganised … If they look like they are snowballing, it is more because people everywhere are affected,” said Prof Victoria Tin-bor Hui, a political scientist at Notre Dame University in Indiana. “[But] Covid measures have also drastically increased the party’s surveillance capacity. The tensions will escalate, but we can’t predict when the explosion will come.”

Prof Chung Kim-wah, a social scientist formerly at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, said the protests “demonstrate that people have lost patience with the unreasonable [Covid] measures and are questioning their effectiveness”, but added that the unorganised protests are not a strong enough force to confront the government. He said that protesters will often give in to minor adjustments. “This makes bottom-up changes very difficult, if not impossible,” he said.

*Name has been changed.

Additional reporting by Xiaoqian Zihu