The Chinese have had enough. They are rioting against the Zero-Covid lockdown policies that Xi has dictatorially imposed upon its citizens for the last three years.

China’s lockdown policies included mandating that people not leave their apartment, as in, don’t even dare step foot out into the hallway of the building. Testing for Covid, in some cases meant testing multiple times a day or through the week. People had food shortages because they couldn’t get groceries.

Now, it is looking very likely that the Chinese have had more than enough of Xi’s power overreach. One of Apple’s iPhone factories is in serious trouble because of Covid outbreaks and the factory’s lockdown policies. 

Employees at the world’s biggest Apple iPhone factory were beaten and detained in protests over pay amid anti-virus controls, according to witnesses and videos on social media Wednesday, as tensions mount over Chinese efforts to combat a renewed rise in infections.

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Foxconn said earlier its Zhengzhou factory uses “closed-loop management,” which means employees live at their workplace with no outside contact.

Let me get this straight. Workers at that iPhone factory weren’t allowed to leave the premises, nor have any contact with outsiders such as friends and family. This was “supposed” to ensure that no one would get Covid. Yet people still are. 

An apartment fire in Shanghai ended with quite a number of people injured and killed. Why? Because the streets were clogged with cars, and the lockdown policies that had been in place since late July meant people were more scared of the consequences of leaving their apartment than of the fire itself. 

Flames engulfed the upper floors of a high-rise apartment block in downtown Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital, on Thursday evening, killing 10 people, including three children, and leaving nine hospitalized with smoke inhalation, officials said. According to an initial investigation, the blaze was caused by a power strip catching fire in a bedroom of one of the apartments.

Videos shared on Chinese social media platforms showed firetrucks parked at a distance from the building and spraying water that fell short of the flames, leading some to question whether pandemic limitations on movement had prevented the trucks from getting closer or arriving fast enough.

Unbelievably, yet par for the course, officials aren’t blaming themselves nor the lockdown policies for this tragedy. No, they are blaming the residents of the building. 

Which has led to multiple protests in both Shanghai and around the country.

After erupting in the Xinjiang region, social media footage indicates that demonstrations have now broken out in Nanjing, Urumqi, Wuhan, Guangzhou and Beijing, where street protesters tore down a physical COVID barrier.

The Chinese Communist Party has pursued a zero-COVID policy, cracking down on any virus transmission by implementing stringent lockdown measures that confine millions of people to their homes for months on end. But case numbers have begun to surge recently.

For once, people were so mad that China’s social media censors couldn’t keep up. Which is good, because now the Western world is seeing more of how the Chinese people have been suffering under the Zero-Covid lockdown policies. 

China’s government is so entrenched in their Zero-Covid lockdown policies that they don’t know how to gracefully back themselves out of the hole they’ve dug. A hole that many have known and others are coming to realize is highly ineffective.

Here in the U.S., 58% of the folks who’ve received the vaccines and gotten boosted STILL get Covid. In China, this is a factor as well. 

The nation reported another 39,791 new cases spread across the country – the biggest one-day increase on record – including a record 4,307 in Beijing alone.

But it appears ill-equipped for the latest battle with Covid, with it using its own vaccines, rather than approved foreign ones, which do not have the same effectiveness at beating back the virus.

In other words, China’s own Covid vaccines work as well as Pfizer and Moderna, that is to say, people will still get Covid no matter how many times they’ve gotten vaccinated or boosted. Here’s something else, as with many of the lockdown policies here in the U.S., some of China’s policies just don’t make any sense! 

From the same source:
“However, they are allowed to take public transport bus and subway as well as go to work” with the limited QR code

My closest subway line, line two, has more than one million passengers each and every day, and is crowded at almost all hours, even these days

— Jared T Nelson (@JaredTNelson) November 22, 2022

So, vaccine passports for five days that keep a person out of grocery stores, restaurants, etc. Yet it’s totally fine to ride an extremely crowded subway and go to work?? 

As I noted above, it’s looking highly likely that the Chinese people have finally had enough. 

‘We want freedom!’ pic.twitter.com/yoTeYaFJAx

— Eva Rammeloo (@eefjerammeloo) November 26, 2022

The blank white sheets of paper are a direct dig at the Chinese government’s censorship policies. Said policies include crackdowns  and disappearances if people try to speak up against the Zero-Covid lockdown measures. 

This courageous man stood in front of a shopping mall in #Shanghai holding a sheet of paper on which was written “You know what I want to say.” He was taken away by the police. pic.twitter.com/oxI4iuqLjT

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) November 27, 2022

Thousands of Chinese citizens are bravely protesting against one of the most dictatorial governments in the world. They have had enough and are risking imprisonment or death by speaking up and protesting.  

Zero Covid isn’t possible. Yet the Chinese government will persist to the detriment of the citizens and the Chinese economy. 

Feature Photo Credit: Thierry Ehrmann/flickr/cropped/CC BY 2.0.