China sends students home and police patrols to quell protests

BEIJING (AP) – Chinese universities sent students home and police deployed in Beijing and Shanghai to prevent further protests on Tuesday after crowds angry at tough anti-virus restrictions called on leader Xi Jinping to resign. In the biggest public opposition show in decades.

Authorities relaxed some controls after demonstrations in at least eight mainland cities and Hong Kong, but stressed they would adhere to a “zero COVID” strategy that locks millions of people in their homes for months at a time. Security forces arrested an unknown number of people and stepped up surveillance.

With the police out in force, there was no word on the protests on Tuesday in Beijing, Shanghai or other major mainland cities that were the scene last weekend of the most widespread protests. Since the army crushed the student-led pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

In Hong Kong, about a dozen people, mostly from the mainland, protested at a university.

Tsinghua University in Beijing, where students protested over the weekend, and other schools in the capital and southern Guangdong province sent students home. The schools said they were protected from COVID-19, but dispersing them to remote towns also reduces the potential for further demonstrations. Chinese leaders are wary of universities, which have been hotbeds of activity including the Tiananmen protests.

On Sunday, Tsinghua students were told they could go home early in the semester. The school, Shi’s University, arranged buses to take them to the train station or airport.

Nine student dormitories in Tsinghua were closed on Monday after some students tested positive for COVID-19, according to one who noted the closure would make it difficult for crowds to gather. He gave the student only his surname, Chen, for fear of reprisal from the authorities.

Beijing Forestry University also said it would arrange for the students to return home. It said faculty and students had tested negative for the virus.

At least 10 universities have sent students home. The schools said that classes and final exams will be conducted online.

Dali Yang, an expert on Chinese politics at the University of Chicago, said the authorities hoped to “defuse the situation” by evacuating the campuses.

He said that depending on how tough the stance the government takes, the groups may take turns protesting.

The police appear to be trying to keep their crackdown a low profile, perhaps to avoid drawing attention to the scale of the protests or to encourage others. Videos and posts on Chinese social media about the protests have been deleted by the ruling party’s vast internet censorship apparatus.

There were no announcements of arrests, though reporters saw protesters being taken away by police, and authorities warned some detained protesters not to demonstrate again.

In Shanghai, police stopped pedestrians and checked their phones on Monday night, which, according to an eyewitness, may have been looking for apps such as Twitter banned in China or images of protests. The witness, who insisted on anonymity for fear of arrest, said he was on his way to a demonstration but found no crowd there when he arrived.

Photos from a protest over the weekend, seen by the Associated Press, showed police pushing people into cars. Some people were also arrested in police raids after the demonstrations ended.

A person who was living near a protest site in Shanghai was arrested Sunday and held until Tuesday morning, according to two friends who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals from the authorities.

In Beijing, police on Monday visited a resident who had attended a protest the night before, according to a friend who declined to be identified for fear of reprisals. He said that the police interrogated the resident and warned him not to go to any more protests.

On Tuesday, protesters at the University of Hong Kong chanted against virus restrictions and held up papers with critical slogans. Some of the spectators joined in their chants.

The demonstrators held banners reading “Say No to Coronavirus Panic” and “No Dictatorship but Democracy”.

One of them shouted: “We are not foreign forces, but your classmates.” Chinese authorities often try to discredit domestic critics by saying they work for foreign powers.

“COVID ZERO” Help keep case numbers below those in the US and other major countries, but global health experts increasingly say it’s unsustainable.

The head of the International Monetary Fund told the Associated Press that Beijing needs to make its approach “very targeted” to reduce economic turmoil. In an interview on Tuesday.

“We see the importance of moving away from massive lockdowns,” said IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva in Berlin. “So this targeting allows the spread of COVID to be contained without significant economic costs.”

However, economists and health experts warn that Beijing cannot ease the controls that keep most travelers out of China until tens of millions of elderly people have been vaccinated. They say this means “zero COVID” may not end for another year.

On Tuesday, the National Health Commission announced plans to encourage older people to get vaccinated with publicity campaigns, and to raise awareness through community centers and mobile vaccination sites to reach people who cannot leave home.

Public tolerance of the restrictions has eroded as some people confined to their homes said they struggled to access food and medicine.

Last month, the Chinese Communist Party promised to reduce unrest, but the rising number of infections prompted cities to tighten controls.

The weekend’s protests were sparked by outrage over the deaths of at least 10 people in a fire in far western China last week, prompting angry questions online about whether firefighters or victims trying to flee had been blocked by anti-virus controls.

Most of the protesters complained about the excessive restrictions, but some have turned their anger on Xi, China’s most powerful leader since at least the 1980s.

In video verified by the Associated Press, a crowd in Shanghai on Saturday chanted, “Xi Jinping! Get down! CCP! Get down!” Such direct criticism of something unprecedented.

Protests of sympathy were held abroad, and foreign governments called on Beijing to show restraint.

“We support the right of people everywhere to peacefully protest and make their views, concerns and frustrations known,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a visit to Bucharest, Romania.

Meanwhile, the British government summoned the Chinese ambassador to protest the arrest and beating of a BBC cameraman in Shanghai.

Freedom of the media, said Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, “is something absolutely intrinsic to the heart of the UK’s belief system”.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian questioned the British version of events. Zhao said the journalist, Edward Lawrence, had failed to be identified and accused the BBC of misrepresenting the story.

Asked about criticism of the campaign, Zhao defended Beijing’s anti-virus strategy and said the public’s legal rights were protected by law.

He said the government is trying to “provide maximum protection for people’s lives and health while minimizing the impact of the coronavirus on social and economic development.”

Wang Dan, a former student leader of the 1989 demonstrations who lives in exile, said the protest “symbolized the beginning of a new era in China … in which Chinese civil society decided not to remain silent and confront tyranny.”

But he warned at a news conference in Taipei, Taiwan, that the authorities are likely to respond with “stronger force to violently suppress the protesters”. ___

Kang reported from Shanghai and Wu from Taipei, Taiwan. Associated Press writers Canice Leung in Hong Kong, Jill Lawless in London, David McHugh in Berlin, and Elaine Nickmayer in Bucharest, Romania, contributed to this.