@Cronos 29 November 2022 more from that month

China Protests Anti-lockdown protests erupted in China across the weekend after a fight in Arumchi killed 10 people. Locals blamed the disaster on the zero COVID restrictions first introduced in early August, which made it harder for residents to leave their apartments and delayed local firefighters. For context, unlike other developed economies that have vaccinated their way to mass immunity, China is pursuing a "zero-covid" policy that essentially aims to eliminate the virus entirely via hyper-stringent lockdowns. There was even some speculation that the victims were welded into their apartments, a practice not uncommon in China during the lockdowns. Local authorities originally denied this and actually seemed to blame the victims for their, quote, "lack of survival know-how" at a press conference but backtracked on Friday afternoon, issuing a rare apology and vowing to punish anyone who had deserted their duty. This was too little, too late, and hundreds of Arumchi residents gathered outside government buildings on Friday evening to demand an end to the lockdown. The protests quickly spread to at least 10 other cities in China, including Beijing, Shanghai, and Chengdu, where thousands of people took to the streets to demand an end to "Zero COVID" and, in some cases, entered Xi Jinping's rule. While the protests had mostly subsided by Monday morning, in large part thanks to an increased police presence across most major cities, these protests nonetheless represent at least the most explicit challenge to the CCPD's authority since 1989. The CCP are now in an unenviable position: either they can stick with zero COVID and run the risk of further protests or move towards a more relaxed policy, which would be politically embarrassing and run the risk of overwhelming China's rickety public health system. Only about 60 percent of elderly Chinese people are fully vaccinated, and China's domestic Synovac vaccine is less effective than its Western counterparts. So if the CCP loosens restrictions too quickly, they could see a wave of deaths that would overwhelm China's health system and create yet another political problem for Ji's regime.