Selina Wang begins our
coverage OUTFRONT live in Beijing.
And Selina,
you have been covering this now
for a long time.
You have seen this build up.
You're there in Beijing in person.
How are authorities responding tonight?
Well, when I went to those protests
in Beijing,
those people there,
they were determined
to make their voices heard.
But at the same time
as you showed there,
China's giant censorship
machine is in overdrive.
Determined to make it
as if those protests never happened.
Erasing videos,
comments of the protests
across the country on all Chinese
social media platforms.
State media
meanwhile, completely ignoring it all
and publishing headlines
reiterating that zero COVID
is scientific and effective.
But the protesters in China
know that this is the
system they're up against.
They chant.
Xi Jinping, step down.
An extraordinary show of defiance
in China.
In Shanghai,
they chant for freedom, democracy,
an end to COVID lockdowns.
So even targeting the Communist Party
and the supreme leader himself,
Unprecedented protests
are erupting across China
from major metropolises
to elite college campuses,
even far flung cities
Searing nationwide anger
triggered by a deadly fire
in China's far west Xinjiang region.
Water unable
to actually
reach the fire,
blazing from the high floor
of the apartment building.
Videos
indicate COVID
restrictions prevented
fire trucks from getting close enough,
apparently blocked by fences
and metal barriers
normally used during lockdown
to show animals show
they all in the building's chat group.
A mother, please help us.
My kids are dying
We don't have enough oxygen.
At least ten people died.
We must learned how to stop
the nation.
Grieving
the deaths of victims
that likely spent
the last months of their lives
trapped in that building.
Most of Xinjiang
has been locked down
for more than 100 days.
The protests
even spilling into the capital.
They're chanting that
they don't want COVID tests.
They want freedom
And many people are also holding
white papers in their hands,
which is a sign
of solidarity against censorship.
They sing and cheer
up, shout to be unsealed.
And some even break down into tears.
When we
growing up
A man with a loudspeaker shouts,
we always support the Communist Party,
but we want democracy and freedom.
Totally.
I asked a protester how he was feeling.
Overwhelmed.
He said, I'm doing what I'm doing.
And I don't know how
all conscientious
Chinese people should come here
and stand together.
This needs it all. It's only a function.
I said,
You realize there's a risk being here?
Of course there is, he responded.
And if we just turn the camera around,
you'll see there is a row of police.
Hours later,
masses of police filed in,
pushing the protesters back with all the
demonstrators shout
towards the authorities.
We are not your enemy.
We are in this together.
These are unbelievable scenes
in China,
where public criticism of the party
can lead to prison time or even worse,
In Shanghai,
police arrested, roughed up
protesters violently,
dragging them into cars
No protests of this scale
demanding political reforms
have been seen
since the Tiananmen
pro-democracy protests in 1989
that led to a massacre
of unarmed protesters.
Yes.
Yes these demonstrators know what
they're risky
but they're determined
to make their voices heard.
And, Aaron,
there is now a heavy security
presence in places
where there have been protests,
including here in Beijing last night.
I went back to that exact place
where I was the day
before there at the protest,
and we filmed video when we drove by.
You can see that
it's eerily quiet
with a giant row of police
vans parked with their lights flashing.
This is a stark reminder
that this is a police state with far
reaching security
surveillance capabilities.
It's also a country
where social media like Facebook
and Twitter are banned.
The main messaging platform
is monitored by authorities.
It's not easy for protesters
to communicate, mobilize
and continue to have their voices
heard in China.
But while the authorities,
they can snuff out evidence
within China of what's happened here,
that anger, well, it's not going away.
Credible All right.
Thank you so much, Selina Wang.
As you can see in Beijing
and was at the protest
there this weekend.
It is stunning.
Celina is showing that image
of the day after
just with all those lights on
and completely block walking off.
I want to go now to Yanjun
Wang, who's a senior
fellow for global health
at the Council on Foreign Relations,
and author of Toxic Politics
China's Environmental Health Crisis
and its Challenge to the Chinese State,
along with Ian Bremmer, the president
and founder
of the Eurasia Group
and the author of The Power of Crisis.
So, Ian, you know,
it is really amazing seeing Selina
there on the streets
right amidst protesters.
One of them know
even willing
to speak right,
even willing to take
that risk to speak out.
And then seeing them, you know, so,
so snuffed out the next day.
But this is now across China.
Why is Xi Jinping willing
to risk all this unrest
and these protests and the economy?
All 40 COVID
Well, first of all,
I think it comes as a surprise to him.
I mean, a couple of weeks ago
when he was in Bali
and doing bilateral meetings
with other heads of state,
he wasn't talking about zero COVID.
He wasn't expressing
a lot of concern about it.
I think that if he had been honest,
he wouldn't have thought
that he was going
to get these sorts of demonstrations
spontaneously from students, from workers
from the middle classes
in cities across the country.
But also, he's backed into it.
Right, because, I mean, you do not
you do not have vaccines
that inadequate numbers that work
for the population at large.
And most of the oldest
haven't had a vaccine
in a couple of years now.
The hospitals aren't capable
of dealing with massive
and unmitigated spread.
So they're a bit backed into a corner
by a policy that worked very well
the first year
they implemented and abysmally poorly
as we stand right now.
So in June, China's
official news agency, Xinhua,
published an Op-Ed Monday that echoes
something that Selina just said
that she said is all of our state media,
and that is that the COVID measures
are, quote, scientific and effective.
So from a public health
standpoint, is zero COVID right?
Now necessary to control COVID in China?
If you buy that you want to control,
it is zero COVID
the way they're doing it, the right
way to do it?
Oh, no, it's
from a public health perspective, it's
no longer justifiable.
I think even the Chinese
leading public health experts agree
that the the virus, but it's now
so intense virulence
as being
much less civil than the original strain.
And if you also look at real world data,
I'm from Shanghai to Quanzhou,
and now the nationwide data,
more than 95% of the cases symptomatic
and very few actual civil cases.
So and yet they continue
with these lockdowns,
you know, where we've
now seen reports of 87,000 beds
being readied
for people who are going
have to be quarantined
because cases are hitting record highs.
I want to show again
some of the video of these protests
because it is so incredible
to see this in cities across China
that this video is now there
we can see it right.
Selena even filmed
some of it herself right
We can see it
even though it's being banned in China.
What will the Chinese government do?
What will Xi Jinping do
if the protests don't stop
Yeah, certainly.
I mean, this is the exact opposite of the message
that Xi Jinping wants
domestically as well as around the world.
The last time you and
I talked about China on air.
It was about Hu Jintao
and how Xi Jinping was displaying
such extraordinary capacity
to to basically stifle and emasculate
the former president of the country.
Now,
he has suddenly these demonstrations,
some of which are even calling
for his ouster.
There's no chance
he's going to allow that to persist
for weeks on end.
I think there'll be carrot and stick.
There'll be
some local officials that will be removed
for poor implementation. Of zero COVID.
They'll probably be loosening
in the way that zero COVID
is actually laid out and policed
compared to what we've seen
over the past weeks and months.
But there's also going
to be a clear crackdown
against further demonstrations,
especially those that have an overt
political message to them.
I can't imagine
they would allow that to continue.
Yeah, right.
Assume some of those chants, right?
They included words
of freedom, democracy,
some even mentioning Xi Jinping himself.
Right. Others more specifically
about COVID itself.
Andrew, one question that I have
and just can't get
my head around is this.
If Xi Jinping is capable
of locking down a country
of more than a billion
people for three years, essentially,
which is what he has successfully done.
Why couldn't he just mandate the vaccine
for everybody,
especially the elderly population
So, yeah, well,
I think there are a couple of reasons.
First of all,
you know, he's
not sure about the Chinese
vaccine, actually.
And that effective in terms of
even preventing severe
cases, not to mention my dad, that is,
the vaccines
are much less effective
in terms of preventing infection.
So even though
they have 90% of the population
being vaccinated with two doses
and there's a much that lockdown
before March.
And so
now most people by the antibody level
have dropped into a level
that is very low or undetectable.
And the zero COVID,
we know the policy cannot tolerate
any infections.
So even the best vaccines
cannot guarantee 100% protection.
So I think that is the reason
he was not so
sure by it is a good idea.
To mandate the vaccine on the elderly
because it won't necessarily help
achieve the zero COVI objective.