Tense calm in China – government wants to appease protesters with vaccination campaign

Created: 2022-11-29Updated: 2022-11-29 10:48 am

Where is China headed?

It is still unclear how the corona protests in the country will develop.

The government is now giving in – at least a little.

• Riots

  against

  zero-Covid strategy

  : Beijing increases police presence

• Corona protests

  in

  China

  : State media hide the topic

• This

  news ticker

  on the

  protests in China

  is continuously updated.

Update from November 29, 10:25 a.m .:

In response to the protests of the past few days, China is slightly adapting its corona strategy.

A vaccination campaign for older people is to be promoted, as a spokesman for the Beijing Health Commission said on Tuesday.

"We should speed up vaccination against Covid-19, especially in the elderly," it said.

China currently does not use foreign mRNA vaccines, but only uses vaccines made in China.

The problem with this: The Made-in-China vaccines only achieve the same effectiveness as the western competition from the third dose.

However, only around 40 percent of people over the age of 80 are currently triple vaccinated, as the spokesman for Beijing's health commission said on Tuesday.

The campaign now announced aims to change that.

In Hong Kong on Monday, people showed solidarity with the protesters in China.

© Zen Soo / dpa / AP

Riots against zero-Covid strategy: Beijing increases police presence

First report from November 29th:

Munich/Beijing – China is experiencing the biggest protests in decades: Since the weekend, people have been taking to the streets in several cities across the country to demonstrate against the government’s corona policy in Beijing.

The protests began on Saturday evening, first in Shanghai, then in other cities across the country.

The trigger was an apartment fire in Ürümqi, the capital of Xinjiang province, in which ten people died.

A little later there were rumors in the city that the strict corona measures had hindered the fire brigade's extinguishing work.

The protests continued on Sunday and Monday.

A tense calm prevails in China at the moment, as evidenced by videos shared on social networks such as Twitter.

In the country's major cities, the police presence was massively increased;

the officers stationed themselves in front of shopping malls, busy squares and major streets.

Further demonstrations are to be nipped in the bud.

It is not known how many arrests there have been in the past few days.

Individual arrests could be seen on videos, but there are no official figures.

Corona protests in China: State media hide the topic

Meanwhile, China's state media are not reporting on the demonstrations.

On Monday, the front page of the

, the communist party newspaper, featured another comment defending the government's corona measures.

Apparently, this was no longer considered necessary on Tuesday; instead, topics such as the Mongolian president's visit to Beijing dominated the headlines.