China protests: Protesters clash with hazmat-clad Covid-enforcers

Protesters have clashed with riot police wearing white hazmat suits in China, with demonstrators throwing glass bottles at the officials in chaotic and violent scenes.

Video shows scores of riot police in all-white pandemic gear, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, cowering under their see-through shields as glass smashed around them in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou.

The police officers were seen advancing in formation over what appeared to be torn down lockdown barriers, as anger continues to mount over President Xi Jinping‘s zero-Covid policy.

Riot police were later seen man-handling protesters and dragging a row of people in handcuffs to an unknown location. Other officers were seen throwing a tear gas cannister towards the demonstrators in a narrow street, prompting panic among the group as they tried to run away from the fumes.

China’s top security body warned late last night that authorities would ‘crack down’ on the protests, which are the most widespread since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, where hundreds – if not thousands – of Chinese protesters were killed by soldiers in tanks.

The protests erupted over the weekend across major cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, with China’s vast security apparatus moving swiftly to smother any further unrest.

But new clashes broke out in Guangzhou on Tuesday night and into Wednesday. 

Riot police in hazmat suits formed ranks shoulder-to-shoulder, taking cover under their riot shields, to make their way down a street in the southern city’s Haizhu district as glass smashed around them. 

In the footage, people could be heard screaming and shouting, as orange and blue Covid barricades were pictured strewn across the floor. 

People are seen throwing objects at the police, and later nearly a dozen men are filmed being taken away with their hands bound with cable ties.

A Guangzhou resident surnamed Chen said on Wednesday that he witnessed around 100 police officers converge on Houjiao village in Haizhu district and arrest at least three men on Tuesday night.

Anger over China’s zero-Covid policies – which involves lockdowns of huge numbers of people and has strangled the economy – has been the trigger for the protests.

A deadly fire last week in Urumqi, the capital of the northwestern region of Xinjiang, was the catalyst for the outrage, with people blaming Covid curbs for trapping victims inside the burning building.

But demonstrators have also demanded much wider political reforms in communist China, with some even calling for President Xi Jinping to stand down.

Signalling its zero-tolerance approach to the protests, China’s top security body called for a ‘crackdown’ on what it described as ‘hostile forces’.

The body – which oversees all domestic law enforcement in China – also agreed at its meeting that it was time to ‘crack down on illegal criminal acts that disrupt social order’ as well as ‘safeguard overall social stability’.

The warning came after a heavy police presence across Beijing and Shanghai on Tuesday appeared to have quelled protests in those cities.

Authorities have sought to intimidate protesters by going to their houses and taking them to police stations. 

‘Police came to my front door to ask me about it all and get me to complete a written record,’ a Beijing resident who declined to be identified told Reuters on Wednesday.

Another resident said some friends who posted videos of protests on social media were taken to a police station and asked to sign a promise they ‘would not do that again’.

On Wednesday, several police cars and security personnel were posted at an eastern Beijing bridge where a protest took place three days earlier. 

Some rallies did go ahead elsewhere on Monday and Tuesday, however.

At Hong Kong’s oldest university, over a dozen people led the crowd Tuesday in chanting slogans such as ‘give me liberty or give me death’.

‘We are not foreign forces, we are Chinese citizens. China should have different voices,’ one woman shouted, while another held a placard mourning victims of the Urumqi fire.

In Hangzhou, just over 170 kilometres (105 miles) southwest of Shanghai, there was heavy security and sporadic protests in the city’s downtown on Monday night.

China’s strict control of information and continued travel curbs have made verifying protester numbers across the vast country very challenging.

But the widespread rallies seen over the weekend are exceptionally rare in China and it comes as China’s economy sputters after growing at breakneck rates for decades.

That era of prosperity was fundamental for the social contract between the Communist Party and a population whose freedoms have been dramatically curtailed since President Xi Jinping took power 10 years ago.

The latest unrest has drawn global attention, with solidarity protests springing up from Melbourne to Washington.

In China, Covid has spread despite Beijing largely isolating itself from the world and demanding significant sacrifices from hundreds of millions to comply with relentless testing and prolonged isolation, three years into the pandemic. 

China’s National Health Commission (NHC) announced on Tuesday a renewed effort to expand low vaccination rates among the elderly – long seen as a key obstacle to relaxing the measures.

Many fear that opening the country up while swaths of the population remain not fully immunised could overwhelm China’s healthcare system and cause more than a million deaths.

China logged 37,612 domestic cases Wednesday, down from record highs over the weekend and comparatively tiny compared to caseloads in the West at the height of the pandemic.

The lockdowns have hammered the economy, disrupting global supply chains and roiling financial markets.

Data on Wednesday showed China’s manufacturing and services activity for November posting the lowest readings since Shanghai’s two-month lockdown began in April. 

Chinese stocks were steady, with markets weighing endemic economic weakness against hopes that the public pressure could push China to eventually reopen. 

International Monetary Fund chief Kristalina Georgieva flagged a possible downgrade in China growth forecasts.