China’s Zero-COVID Policy Through A Human Rights Lens
The 24th of November 2022 witnessed a fire in a residential apartment building in an Uyghur-majority neighbourhood in Urumqi, Xinjiang, which reportedly killed ten and injured nine Chinese citizens. A wave of protests has consequently swept over 15 Chinese cities, including Shanghai, Chengdu, Guangzhou, and Wuhan – in particular, the campuses of prestigious institutions, such as Peking University and Tsinghua University in Beijing. The demonstrators have been calling for the end of the "Zero-COVID policy" - considered a violation of human freedoms.
The current protests are believed to be the largest in China since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, which is estimated to have killed at least 10,000 people. This time, like in 1989, the protests reveal deeply-rooted and long-established social frustration with the central government. Since the beginning of the pandemic, China’s President Xi Jinping has been censoring media, detaining and disappearing independent journalists and government critics, stirring discrimination against Hubei residents and Uyghurs, and enacting aggressive cyber policing and invasive online surveillance - all of which contributed to the significant human right violations.
Lockdown Frustration
The Zero-COVID policy has demanded strict lockdowns: tens of millions in at least 30 regions have been forced to stay home, often short of food and medical help. Most famously, the two-month lockdown in Shanghai led many into forced quarantines (or into violence in case of a refusal) and deprived people of food and other essential commodities. Reportedly, many experienced mass testing and persistent control of personal sanitary information and location. The separation of parents and their children, the inability to access health information, and the deprivation of the right to medical assistance – all symbolise the Shanghai lockdown. The social problems resurfaced particularly strongly in manufacturing factories, where the central government implemented "closed-loop" management systems that required staff to live and work on-site in a secure bubble. In those factories, such as Apple’s manufacturer in Zhengzhou, Foxconn,, workers have sometimes lived in 12 per room, often getting stuck in the same dormitories as the workers who tested positive. Such conditions at the manufacturing sites further sparked protests – most notably, in Zhengzhou. The anger of the working class alongside the frustration of the ordinary Chinese has further become a trigger of the recent demonstrations.
White A4
Between January 1 and March 26 of 2020, Chinese Human Rights Defenders reported 897 cases of punishments against the freedom of expression, including online speech or information-sharing suppression related to the coronavirus outbreak. On the pretext of stifling the spread of panic and misinformation, and disrupting social order, the government emphasises the maintenance of “a clear network environment” by preventing the flow of information and silencing public opinion through an invasive digital surveillance system. For example, a social media platform WeChat deployed “professional third-party rumour removal agencies,” few journalists were forced to publicly admit their alleged "wrongdoings”, while medical personnel were prohibited from speaking with the press. Such governmental cover-up and reduced transparency, which led to the under-reporting, have potentially disillusioned the central government, further inhibiting the implementation of effective anti-COVID policies and, therefore, contributing to the spread of the virus. Recently, the authorities introduced the “itinerary card” app that was used to control and regulate people’s travel. In this context, throughout the latest protests, an A4 blank paper has become a symbol of everything the Chinese want to but cannot say.
Arbitrary Detention and Enforced Disappearances
Since the beginning of the pandemic, tightened media control has been functioning alongside arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance under the disguise of mandatory quarantine. Already on December 30th 2019, the Wuhan Health Commission prohibited medical personnel from sharing any information about the virus. On February 6th 2020, Dr Li Wenliang, one of the first medical professionals attempting to share information about COVID-19, passed away after contracting the virus. Further into the pandemic, a myriad of intellectuals, citizen journalists, lawyers, and human rights defenders either went missing, were detained on charges of “inciting subversion of state power”, disappeared into forced quarantine, orformally arrested.
Police intimidation was particularly significant in suppressing civil society efforts. Across the country, the police forces have visited activists and lawyers to intimidate them into silence about the government’s mismanagement of the virus outbreak. For instance, Guangzhou-based lawyer Sui Muqing was threatened for posting online information; artist Wang Zang has been harassed by police in Yunnan; Hunan activist Chen Siming was dragged into a police station and forced to delete tweets and Changsha police seized Fan Junyi for sharing foreign media reports. Amidst such outright human rights violations, the government called for support from civil rights organizations in fighting the pandemic. However, the Ministry of Home Affairs only referred to registered social organizations, neglecting that many independent civil society groups cannot register in China. To handicap the anti-governmental actions of civil society even more, the Charity Law orders NGOs and individuals to donate or distribute aid to government-controlled organizations that have been ineffective in fighting the pandemic.
Discrimination incidents
On top of that, various reports point to the discrimination acts against Hubei or Wuhan residents who left before the lockdown. Some were refused service at hotels or restaurants, some were forced to go to homeless shelters, and some received death threats for the single fact of coming from the pandemic epicentre. The deliberate top-down discrimination affected the imaginations of the ordinary Chinese: passengers refused to board planes with Wuhan or Hubei residents on board, employers rejected their job applications on the basis of residential background, and they were denied access to services and entry to specific areas of mainland China. The policies were no different from the times of the Jim Crow era: Hubei residents were not allowed to enter certain provinces, while the toilet signs in a few public restrooms designated stalls for Hubei visitors only.
Most famously, China has been accused by the United Nations of "serious human rights violations" in their latest report that examines abuse claims against Uyghur Muslims and other Muslim ethnic minorities – all denied by China. The report is founded on the alarming voices of human rights groups alleging that over one million Uyghurs had been imprisoned against their will in “re-education camps” under the disguise of anti-COVID policies. However, the allegations extend beyond detainment, suggesting forced medical treatment and adverse conditions of detention, incidents of sexual and gender-based violence, and coercion and discrimination on religious and ethnic grounds.
Despite China’s Law on the Prevention and Treatment of Infectious Diseases, which severely “prohibits discrimination against patients or suspected patients of infectious diseases”, the governmental authorities have failed to respond to the discrimination acts. The lack of an unambiguous and thorough anti-discrimination law has inhibited any efforts to prevent and eradicate discrimination in China. In this context, the UN report concluded that "the extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention of members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim groups [...] may constitute crimes against humanity.”
One Step Back
In response to the country-wide protests, on December 7th, Xi Jinping dismantled the mass testing and centralized quarantine, while slowly taking the first steps to lift the strict lockdowns – all being the central pillars of the Zero-COVID policy. The new turn in the governmental approach towards the virus does not go hand in hand with the fast-spreading infections and analyst predictions. China’s under-vaccinated elderly population remains vulnerable, seasonal flu increases the probability of COVID contraction, while the upcoming migrations for the Lunar New Year do not bode well for the rural areas, where the healthcare system is particularly vulnerable. The sudden policy changes imply the volatility of Xi Jinping’s anti-COVID policy and the uncertain future laying ahead for all those under his reign.