Chinese universities have sent students home and police have been deployed in Beijing and Shanghai to prevent further protests after crowds angry over anti-Covid restrictions called for President Xi Jinping to resign in the biggest show of public dissent in decades
Authorities have eased some controls after demonstrations in at least eight mainland cities and Hong Kong, but showed no sign of backing down on their larger zero-Covid strategy, which has confined millions of people to their homes for months at the same time
Security forces have arrested an unknown number of people and stepped up surveillance.
With police out in force on Tuesday, there were no signs of protests in Beijing, Shanghai or other major mainland cities that saw crowds gather over the weekend.
The widespread demonstrations were unprecedented since the military crushed the 1989 student-led pro-democracy movement centered on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
A much smaller group gathered at a university in Hong Kong to protest the restrictions.
Tsinghua University in Beijing, where students gathered over the weekend, and other schools in the capital and southern Guangdong province said they were protecting students from Covid-19 by sending them home.
Having them in distant home cities also reduces the likelihood of further demonstrations. Chinese leaders are particularly wary of universities, which have been hotbeds of activism, including the Tiananmen protests.
On Sunday, Tsinghua students were told they could return home before term and that the university would arrange buses to take them to the train station or airport.
Nine student dormitories at Tsinghua were closed on Monday after some students tested positive for Covid-19, according to one who noted that the closure would make it difficult for crowds to gather.
Beijing Forestry University also said it would arrange for the students to return home. He said his faculty and students had tested negative for the virus.
The universities said classes and final exams will be held online.
Many people are nervous after police arrested some protesters and warned them not to demonstrate again.
In Shanghai, officers stopped pedestrians and searched their phones Monday night, according to a witness, possibly looking for apps like Twitter that are banned in China or images of protests.
Photos from a weekend protest showed police pushing people into their cars. Some were also swept away in raids after the demonstrations ended.
On Tuesday, a dozen people gathered at the University of Hong Kong, chanting against virus restrictions and holding up sheets of paper with critical slogans.
Most were from the mainland, which has a separate legal system from mainland China, and some onlookers joined in their chants.
Demonstrators carried signs saying “Say no to Covid panic” and “Not dictatorship but democracy”.
One chanted “We are not foreign forces, but your classmates,” a reference to the fact that Chinese authorities often accuse foreign powers of fomenting dissent.
China’s zero-Covid policy has helped keep the number of cases lower than in the United States and other major countries, but global health experts have increasingly criticized the methods as unsustainable.
The policy means that few Chinese have been exposed to the virus and vaccination rates for the elderly lag other countries as older people cut back on shots, and vaccines developed in China are less effective than those are used abroad.
Public tolerance of the restrictions has eroded as people in some areas have been confined to their homes for up to four months and struggled to access food and medicine.
The Chinese Communist Party promised last month to ease the disruption by changing quarantine and other rules, but a surge in infections has prompted cities to tighten controls.
The weekend protests were sparked by anger over the death of at least 10 people in a wildfire in far-western China last week that prompted angry questions online about whether anti-virus controls blocked firefighters or the victims who were trying to escape.
Most protesters over the weekend complained about excessive restrictions, but some directed their anger at Xi, China’s most powerful leader since at least the 1980s.
In a video verified by the Associated Press, a crowd in Shanghai on Saturday chanted: “Xi Jinping! Walk down! PCC! Walk down!”
Solidarity protests were held abroad and foreign governments have called on Beijing for restraint.
