I believe they treat COVID as a bioweapon sent from the West.

We (assuming you're American) can make critiques of our own situations because we're in it and understand it. Chances are you know nothing about life in China outside of what the CIA has told you

These protests are small and ran by liberal college students. They don't reflect the popular Chinese opinion

You lack critical thinking skills in entirety

Ok dad

Media is really doing a bad job at covering this due to many factors they’re mostly responsible for. They’re pushing this as a 1st page story and getting 3rd page reception

What’s actually going on and the most recent updates should be taking precedence, but nope I have to sift through a bunch of opinion articles and geopolitics before I can even find something relevant.

It’s currently Wednesday there. Did protests happen in the same way Monday and Tuesday? Most vids I keep seeing are from the weekend.

Oh a thread with no nuance, plenty of posturing and hyperbole just what I wanted

Evidence?

Just watch the videos. The biggest protests (of a few thousand) are in Shanghai, a very liberal city. Much like the United States and the rest of the world, liberalism is very prevalent in large cities in China. Saying these protests reflect the popular Chinese opinion is like saying some small protest in NYC represents the rest of America.

I imagine the majority of the population isn’t happy about oppressive covid restrictions after 3 years regardless of whether they feel the need to outwardly protest.

The protesters probably just represent the tip of the iceberg of popular opinion

That’s how our media is indirectly describing them in Shanghai and Beijing tbf. NYTs recent piece of interviews focuses entirely on students and young professionals. That’s normal tho if you’re gonna focus on those cities which are more liberal

Urumqi is where this triggered and had most intrigue cus a local grievance has a bigger chance of success in China.

Well the amount of people who have died from COVID in China is literally millions below everywhere else

Well yeah, I mean to what end though? COVID isn’t going anywhere and we have vaccines. You can’t isolate a population forever. It’s just delaying the inevitable spread that will occur whenever isolation is over

It’s only been two and a half years since the outbreak. Plagues used to last way longer. COVID has long term health effects and China has gone through terrible illnesses and health crises a few times. They probably want to keep the number as low as possible.

I think you’re mistaking what has happened. People have not literally been locked down for 3 years straight

China had a lockdown initially but it worked well enough to allow them to return majority of the population to normal life up from July 2020 up until they experienced more outbreaks early 2022. It’s frustrating to have to go back to that method and they’ve had issues all year with it on and off.

It’s a “different” and stricter way to go about it for sure but parts of it have been accepted as successful up until a point like the Urumqi tragedy and mishaps in Shanghai earlier. Not entirely smart for your economy tho but they’ve said they prioritize people living

People thinking that covid was a man-made creation

Yes

I just find it unbelievable that Covid deaths in China is only "5,233", especially in a country where the population is basically huddled on one side(the east) and a lot of them are like canned sardines in buildings. Their deaths are under reported, I will never trust China at 100% face value.

Especially WHO after they had their hands in China's pocket at the start of this whole s***. Yea, their measures are effective but they're still being really strict about it after this long past the initial phases for Covid? It seems they're welding shut buildings again or is that now a lie? So the "there's something else no one knows" part of my comment that you tried to clown is obviously not just talking s***. It hasn't died down, the scare for Covid. Otherwise they would've eased up by now.

I could be wrong and China doesn't have that many deaths and their reports are all accurate. But at the end of the day, what China is still doing with their policies is something we haven't seen in modern times. It's wild. It's also inhumane and there's nothing wrong with criticizing how China is shutting people inside and being super aggressive with it. Yet if someone does that, it's " What about ONE MILLION American deaths?". How is that f***ing relevant to what's being talked about here?

It’s not. We talk about Iran and the human rights issue there and for these same people it’s justifiable to them to say “WHAT ABOUT ISRAEL AND PALESTINE?”

f*** china and the ccp

I don't want to derail the thread too much as the subject is about China's COVID policy, but I would argue Australia also crossed the line in several ways, such as going as far as to even prevent citizens of the country from returning for quite some time.

I'm not sure if China did the same thing or not, I'm not sure what their border policy has been throughout COVID, but Australia absolutely crossed several lines on the travel policy alone.

All of the reporting I've seen has said that the protests were small but noteworthy because open political dissent is very rare. It's obviously difficult to know what Chinese population really thinks given the censorship online and oppressive state but it would make sense if they are sick of lockdowns like a lot of people everywhere else was.

amp.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/04/fears-of-deadly-infection-surge-as-china-abandons-zero-covid-policy

The government is already planning to hear out popular dissent and abandon the policy idk what else people expected