{"id":89098,"date":"2022-11-28T13:35:06","date_gmt":"2022-11-28T08:05:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dailypunjabtimes.com\/english\/?p=89098"},"modified":"2022-11-28T13:35:13","modified_gmt":"2022-11-28T08:05:13","slug":"xi-step-down-as-rare-china-covid-protests-spread-moves-to-censor-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dailypunjabtimes.com\/english\/xi-step-down-as-rare-china-covid-protests-spread-moves-to-censor-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Xi, Step Down&#8221;: As Rare China Covid Protests Spread, Moves To Censor It"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Beijing\/Shanghai:&nbsp;<\/strong>As protests over China&#8217;s draconian &#8216;Zero Covid&#8217; policy flared up in several cities, authorities moved to censor online content on the rare demonstrations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>The protests have been fuelled by frustration at the central government&#8217;s zero-Covid policy, which sees authorities impose snap lockdowns, lengthy quarantines and mass testing campaigns over just a handful of cases.<\/li><li>A deadly fire on Thursday in Urumqi, the capital of northwest China&#8217;s Xinjiang region, has become a fresh catalyst for public anger, with many blaming Covid lockdowns for hampering rescue efforts. Authorities deny the claims.<\/li><li>Hundreds of people massed outside Urumqi&#8217;s government offices after the deadly fire, chanting: &#8220;Lift lockdowns!&#8221;<\/li><li>On Sunday night, at least 400 people gathered on the banks of a river in the capital Beijing for several hours, with some shouting: &#8220;We are all Xinjiang people! Go Chinese people!&#8221;<\/li><li>In downtown Shanghai, China&#8217;s biggest metropolis, police clashed with groups of protesters, as officers tried to move people away from the site. Some of them were seen chanting &#8220;Xi Jinping, step down! CCP, step down!&#8221;.\u00a0Three people were arrested from a protest site from the city early this morning.<\/li><li>Protests also occurred\u00a0in Wuhan, the central city where Covid-19 first emerged, while there were reports of demonstrations in Guangzhou, Chengdu and Hong Kong.<\/li><li>State censors appeared to have scrubbed Chinese social media of any news about the rallies, with the search terms &#8220;Liangma River&#8221;, &#8220;Urumqi Road&#8221; &#8212; sites of protests in Beijing and Shanghai &#8212; scrubbed of any references to the rallies on the Twitter-like Weibo platform.<\/li><li>China&#8217;s foreign ministry on Monday said the government&#8217;s &#8220;fight against Covid-19 will be successful&#8221;, a day after people took to the streets across the country.<\/li><li>A BBC journalist\u00a0in China was arrested, handcuffed and beaten by police while covering protests in Shanghai on Sunday.<\/li><li>China reported 40,052 domestic Covid-19 cases Monday, a record high but tiny compared to caseloads in the West at the height of the pandemic.<\/li><\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Beijing\/Shanghai:&nbsp;As protests over China&#8217;s draconian &#8216;Zero Covid&#8217; policy flared up in several cities, authorities moved to censor online content on the rare demonstrations. The protests have been fuelled by frustration at the central government&#8217;s zero-Covid policy, which sees authorities impose snap lockdowns, lengthy quarantines and mass testing campaigns over just a handful of cases. A [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":89099,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypunjabtimes.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypunjabtimes.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypunjabtimes.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypunjabtimes.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypunjabtimes.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89098"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypunjabtimes.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89100,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypunjabtimes.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89098\/revisions\/89100"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypunjabtimes.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypunjabtimes.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypunjabtimes.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypunjabtimes.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}