China’s latest zero-COVID lockdowns spark rare public dissent

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• Judy Woodruff:

  Today, Beijing shut down parks and museums in the city, as the capital of China faces its largest outbreak of COVID in six months.

  Authorities confirmed more than 28,000 cases yesterday and the first official COVID fatality since May. Despite some recent adjustments, the Chinese government maintains the strictest COVID policy in the world.

  And, as Nick Schifrin report, lockdowns that restrict the movements of hundreds of millions of residents are sparking rare public dissent.

• Nick Schifrin:

  In the southern manufacturing hub of Guangzhou today, beyond the closed cafes and the pliant people who submit to swabs, there is rage.

  Last week, residents of China's third largest city pulled down the barriers that for nearly a month have kept them locked down. They targeted the symbols of the state that restrict their freedom. And in a country that punishes protest, they confronted police, unafraid to fight or film.

• Yaqiu Wang, Human Rights Watch:

  They wanted their freedom. They want their rights. They feel it's so wrong to confine them in this situation.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Yaqiu Wang is a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. She says Guangzhou residents are furious at lockdowns and testing requirements that have prevented them from working and even buying food. And the frustration is national.

• Yaqiu Wang:

  People understand, if I go protest, I can be harassed by the police, I can be detained or, worse, I could be imprisoned for years. It happened to so many people.

  And people understand that. But when you know the injustice is too much for too long, you just can't bear it.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Beijing's enforcers maintain the world's strictest COVID restrictions and try to silence dissent, sometimes literally, the policeman's foot on the neck of a Guangzhou resident.

  Elsewhere, they manhandled and arrested a woman for not wearing a mask. And, as families wail, police drag residents to a quarantine camp, where some have been forced to stay for months.

• Yaqiu Wang:

  It has created so many human rights abuses in the past three years. People died because they couldn't access a hospital to have their family members treated.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Earlier this month, a father in the northwest city of Lanzhou tried to save his 3-year-old son from carbon monoxide poisoning. He was too late. The father later wrote they'd been under lockdown and building managers refused to help because he hadn't taken a COVID test.

  "If my son had been able to go just a bit sooner to the hospital, they would have been able to save him."

  In Beijing, this week, the city's most populated district with over three million people shuttered shops and ordered residents to quarantine.

• MAN:

  If there is a positive case in my dorm, then, from what I understand, essentially, everybody in this dorm would have to be sent to a quarantine facility.

• Nick Schifrin:

  We spoke to an American student at Peking University who asked to remain anonymous.

  Last week, students stockpiled food before the entire campus locked down because one of 40,000 students tested positive.

• MAN:

  The school told us that we were no longer permitted to leave campus, except for emergency reasons.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Recently, Beijing eased some COVID rules and shortened quarantines for close contacts of COVID patients and for foreign visitors, eliminated contact tracing for secondary contacts, phased out routine mass testing in several cities, and increased resources at hospitals and intensive care units.

  Yanzhong Huang, Council on Foreign Relations: Those baby steps, if you call it, reflect, I think, the concern about the impact of the zero COVID on the economy, on the society.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Yanzhong Huang is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a professor at Seton Hall University. He points out zero COVID has shut factories, helping depress China's economic growth to its second lowest level in 46 years.

  Last month, workers at iPhone maker Foxconn were so scared of a pending lockdown, they scaled fences to escape. Apple said that delayed shipments of the new iPhone 14. But Chinese officials fear lifting restrictions could lead to the deaths of more than a million people.

• Yanzhong Huang:

  This worst-case scenario where you have the upsurge of cases by — overwhelming the health care system, leading to mass die-off.

• Nick Schifrin:

  But are those estimates, that worst-case scenario, is that realistic?

• Yanzhong Huang:

  From the leading public health expert, Zhang Wenhong, sort of like China's Dr. Fauci, basically telling people that this is not such a severe disease.

• Nick Schifrin:

  And so do you believe that Xi Jinping's decision not to open up further is not a medical one, but a political one?

• Yanzhong Huang:

  This policy, it's so closely tied to President Xi himself, right? Abandoning it immediately would also potentially undermine his personal stature.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Xi Jinping has rewarded party officials who enforce strict versions of zero COVID. So, even as Beijing says it wants to minimize the economic impact, the message is clear: Minimize COVID.

• Yaqiu Wang:

  Beijing is saying that I still want zero COVID, but you should do it in a nicer way to the local government. But, still, ultimately, Beijing wants zero COVID.

  And it's not a democracy. So they're not accountable to the people they are governing. So, my leader told me to continue to institute the zero COVID policy, and I'm not accountable for my abuses. So the abuse is going to continue.

• Nick Schifrin:

  And so too will the tension between the power and the people, as long as Beijing maintains zero COVID.

  For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Nick Schifrin.

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