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Protests and Arrests in China.
Demonstrations have been taking place across the country for days.
The trigger: A fire in an apartment block in Ürümqi in the north-western Chinese region of Xinjiang.
Ten people died in the fire in their homes on Thursday evening.
The skyscraper had been sealed off for weeks.
It was under strict lockdown due to the Chinese government's strict corona rules.
Escape routes are said to have been blocked for people because of the measures.
Christoph Giesen, SPIEGEL correspondent in Beijing
“And that's something that's on the minds of very, very many people in this country right now, because they realize that it could affect them themselves.
These consequences of the very, very tough measures.
What we are essentially witnessing here is a protest, a vote with your feet against the Chinese leadership’s zero-Covid policy.”
In Shanghai, Beijing, Wuhan and many other Chinese cities, people are taking to the streets.
Demonstrators tear down barricades put up by authorities to fight the pandemic.
The anger of the protesters is directed against the zero-Covid policy of head of state Xi Jinping and the Communist Party.
Christoph Giesen, SPIEGEL correspondent in Beijing
»To cite the example from Beijing: It started with a few people who met after sharing a poster via WeChat.
What it said was: We'll meet at 9:30 p.m. with candles, with paper and flowers, at a certain place.
Then geo-coordinates were given and it was the bank of a river in Beijing's diplomatic district.
Then there are actually only a few together at the beginning.
Then two phenomena set in: One, what happened is that videos and photos from this event naturally spread and have spread.
On the one hand on the Chinese Internet, i.e. via services like WeChat or Weibo, but then of course also in cities like Beijing or Shanghai, where many Chinese live who have lived abroad and who also have access to other services,
such as Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.
Then, of course, it will be pushed again through these channels and they will find out about it.«
Many videos of the protests and meeting places on Chinese platforms were quickly deleted by the censorship authorities.
Nevertheless, some Chinese were apparently able to find out about the demonstrations.
Christoph Giesen, SPIEGEL correspondent in Beijing
»Interestingly, some videos have managed to survive these days.
And the degree to which the population knows about what is happening here is relatively high.
Well, I experienced that on Sunday that demonstrators were also cheered on from apartments for supporting them.
'Keep doing what you're doing.' Cars driving by, people sticking their thumbs out of windows, honking their horns, cheering them on."
Although there were arrests at the demonstrations, the Chinese police do not seem to have reacted too rigorously to the protests - at least not directly.
Christoph Giesen, SPIEGEL correspondent in Beijing
»But what we must not forget is that China is a digital dictatorship.
So that means there are very, very many cameras in Beijing's diplomatic district, but also in many other places in Beijing, but also in Shanghai.
In Shanghai, there is talk of three or four million cameras that have been installed there.
These are orders of magnitude that we cannot even imagine in Germany.
And many of these cameras are also equipped with facial recognition software.
So that means it's easy for the police force to evaluate it afterwards and then ring the doorbell and say: Look, here's proof that you did this and that on this and that day .
We can reconstruct that perfectly.
And this facial recognition software that is used in part
The Chinese government has massively increased the police presence in the country's metropolises.
Can the protests shake the power apparatus of Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party?
Christoph Giesen, SPIEGEL correspondent in Beijing
»Well, I don't think it poses any serious threat to the party and Xi Jinping.
We are still very, very far away from that.
But they are noticeably uncomfortable because there have not been any protests of any kind in this country and in this system for very, very many years that were somehow - and that's the important thing - networked with each other.«
It remains to be seen how long the protests in China will continue and whether they will spread.
One thing is certain: The Chinese government will hardly change its zero-Covid policy.
By Chinese standards, the country is in its worst wave of infections to date since the pandemic began.
The authorities reported a new high on Monday with around 40,000 new infections.
