Mass demonstrations against China's strict pandemic measures have broken out in multiple cities across the country
. Despite this, demonstrations against zero-COVID continue to sprout in major cities, including the capital Beijing and the financial hub of Shanghai.
The grievances against testing and quarantine requirements that reached a fever pitch over the weekend have also morphed into brazen opposition against Xi and the ruling Chinese Communist Party. “We don’t want a leader, we want votes,” chanted protesters in Beijing Sunday carrying blank white sheets of paper,. In Shanghai, protesters have called for Xi and the CCP to step down and apologize.
Whether or not this discontent will challenge the ruling party’s power remains to be seen, but “the fact [the current mass protests] were even lodged in the repressive political atmosphere itself suggests that public dissatisfaction has reached the tipping level,” Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, tells TIME.
People also reportedly gathered at universities to show their disapproval of the zero-COVID measures. Videos on social media, which TIME could not immediately verify,students of the Communication University of China in Nanjing gathering for a vigil similar to that in Shanghai. Some protesters also gathered in Peking University and Tsinghua University in Beijing, based on social media posts.
But the deadly high-rise building fire, which also injured nine, took nearly three hours to take out, Bloomberg reports. Residents and users took to social media to denounce authorities’ delayed emergency response, blaming the various zero-COVID restrictions in place. Officials eventually
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