Well, if mass protests are rare in Iran, they were practically unheard of in china yet over the past week and a half, that is exactly what we've seen anger on the streets of chinese cities.

The biggest nationwide display of discontent this tightly controlled country has seen in a generation large crowds of protesters are openly defying the chinese president and calling on him and the Communist Party to step down, thousands of people took to the streets all over the country, angry and frustrated about the car countries, extremely harsh covid restrictions.

Police have responded to the unrest with brutality, chaotic scenes of protesters being dragged, shoved and beaten.

My guest this week is CNN international correspondent Selina wang for months.

She's been looking into the wide ranging repercussions of china's zero covid policy.

We talk about what put these protesters over the edge and what the government's response can tell us about its leader xi Jinping, let's go to Beijing From CNN This is one thing.

I'm David Ryan Selena.

Where does this story start?

So these protests that we've been seeing sweeping across the country are the culmination of years of anger and frustration from people in china who have been living under these draconian zero covid lockdowns.

I mean this has been going on pretty much since the start of the pandemic people are stuck in this endless cycle of lockdowns, Mass quarantine mass testing and that is why all of this pent up anger, it's finally bubbling over in china.

You know, I think when people in the US hear the words lockdown, they think of one thing.

But what is that actually entail in china?

Like what is the zero covid policy in practice?

Yeah, I mean I've been living through this myself.

It's incredibly frustrating, pretty much for the entirety of this year in order to do anything.

I've got to stand in a long line to get a covid test.

It's fluctuated from one once a day, once every two days or once every three days.

It's impossible really to make any plans.

And every time you go in somewhere you scan a code so the government knows where you are at all times.

So when you're like, okay, I want to go meet a friend in a restaurant, then you're like, well if I go into that restaurant, I run the risk of being identified as a close contact.

Because what if tomorrow there's a covid case there.

So me going to this restaurant with my friend, I'm basically putting myself in the risk of getting sent to a mass quarantine facility, doing your rest of your week, the rest of your month by just doing a simple thing like going out to a restaurant.

Yeah, basically like doing anything, like going into a taxi, going into a park, you're like putting yourself into a lottery to have your whole life upended every single time.

So it means that essentially for the past few years, if there's even a single covid case or a small handful of covid cases, a whole city could go into complete lockdown or your whole neighborhood could go into complete lockdown.

And I mean lockdown as in some cases your doors bolted shut, sealed shut fences around your entire compound.

They hear and see people starving, they hear the screams for food and medicine.

And there have been countless stories of people who have died because they couldn't get emergency help and lockdown because they couldn't get enough food.

A desperate mother under lockdown jumping to her death from her 12th floor balcony.

These stories of suffering have played out over and over again.

So you can imagine just how angry this would make The population.

The fire started on the 15th floor.

The smoke poisoned my family.

The government could not stop the fire in time.

So on November 24 there was a deadly fire in a room key.

This is the capital of China's far West Xinjiang province.

This fire occurred on a high floor of an apartment building and videos went viral on social media before sensors were able to scrub all of them and it shows the fire blazing and smoke coming from the building and then you can see there are these tents and covid fences surrounding the compound that appeared to be preventing Ambulances and fire trucks from getting close enough to the building.

They could not escape because the fire escape was blocked and the fire escape to the roof of the building was also locked and then the video shows water going up towards the building but not actually reaching the fire because it's not close enough.

And at least 10 people died.

Several more were injured.

Although some accounts say the death toll was higher than that and that was really the straw that broke the camel's back.

Because there have been these heartbreaking stories just continuously for years.

So these protests, protests in china in general are incredibly rare, right?

Like what did this look like?

Yeah, protests are rare.

Now during Covid we've seen a lot of localized uprisings in a community, you know, where people are just like I'm breaking out of lockdown, you know, let me out of here.

What made these protests so rare was that it was happening sort of around the same time in multiple cities across china.

We're talking about major cities, small cities, university campuses and some of these protests turned into calls not just to end zero Covid but into political demands in shanghai.

There were chants, People were saying she Jinping shat high.

They were saying to xi Jinping stepped down.

I mean that is virtually unheard of.

And so I was still, you know, just getting off live on air and we got word that there was a protest breaking out in Beijing.

So I rushed out to a central area of Beijing and I found myself in the middle of a protest in the capital.

It was surreal.

People have gathered here in the center of Beijing to protest the covid measures.

We are in Salyan district, this is the city center.

So being in the middle of that protest in Beijing there was a lot of excitement, there was some anxiety, there was a lot of energy of it was mostly young people and they were largely chanting Giulio which means no more covid tests.

We want freedom.

There is a heavy police presence.

I am surrounded by police.

They're telling me to shift in a little bit and there was an interesting discussion among protesters where some started to call for more political reforms and then other people were saying no no no that's going too far right.

Like let's not go in that direction, let's just focus this on Covid.

And I interviewed a man who spoke to me live on camera and I can't even begin to say how rare that is.

He was putting himself at risk but he wanted to talk talk to me, he was totally fine being on camera mask list and he said that all conscientious chinese people should be out here with us and he said I'm not looking for regime change or government change.

I just want them to hear our voices.

Many of those people, they were holding up white pieces of paper.

We've seen that in cities across china So that really is a symbol against censorship?

It's like you can't arrest me for holding up a white piece of paper.

There's nothing on it.

Are you going to censor a blank sheet?

Yeah.

Are you going to censor a blank sheet of paper?

It's like I spoke to a protester just the other day and he said to me, it's like a symbol of our generation.

It's everything we want to say.

But we can't say that white paper is everything that we want to say and you cannot arrest us for just holding a white paper.

But of course the government did censor images of people holding white papers.

What do you think you guys achieved by participating in that protest?

If you don't demonstrate, if you don't show them your voice, your idea, they would never know.

Violence will not protect you.

So Selena like you were alluding to before the break, chinese authorities responded to these protests.

Like we would imagine they cracked down really, really hard.

There were some violent scuffles in some cities.

The internet censors were describe any mention of the demonstrations.

Police were even seen checking people's cell phones and calling protesters in the days after.

But what I find really interesting here is that china experts have been saying, oh, this is much bigger than just a china story.

Like these lockdowns could impact the global economy and just look at what's happening at the big Foxconn factory there, can you break that down for me?

Yes.

So since mid october, the world's largest iphone factory in Chengdu in central china.

They've been dealing with absolute chaos at the sprawling Foxconn manufacturing plant in china, have been attempting to escape what is a very strict covid lockdown after a covid outbreak, there were viral videos showing workers walking miles by foot on highways trying to flee the factory because of the total chaotic covid restrictions there.

Then Foxconn went on a hiring spree to try and replace those workers because they need workers ahead of the big holiday season, right?

They need to pump out those iphones for apple.

So they went on a mass hiring spree, brought in more workers, but the COVID restrictions remain what people do not get about Foxconn.

It is massive.

300,000 people all crammed together in small rooms and little places and in very crowded workspace.

This is not fun.

So the workers are living sleeping and working on site and they were complaining about pay disputes, the terrible living conditions, unsanitary conditions and workers had enough.

So there was a mass revolt of workers clashing with police, tearing apart covid barriers using covid barriers as shields, using metal parts from the fence as weapons to hit the police.

And there are videos of police brutally hitting and beating the workers as well.

It was an absolute mess as a result Foxconn was like, okay, we're gonna boost pay, we're gonna make this situation better.

We apologize for the error.

But of course the damage is already done.

Analysts estimate that during this chaotic period Apple was losing a billion dollars a week in lost iphone sales.

I mean that's so like these harsh restrictions are not just a local problem.

It can have kind of global impacts on supply chain tech, all that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

I mean china is the world's factory floor.

This is the world's second largest economy.

It is critical when there's a problem in china impacts global supply change that impacts the global economy and look zero.

Covid has definitely made global companies reassess their reliance on china, especially companies like Apple, but china is still critical and the importance of china in this global network global supply chain, it's it's not going to go away.

But this is definitely a wake up call to big companies.

I have to say wait, wait, wait.

We rely so heavily on china, a country where at any moment all your operations could go dark.

Is that a smart idea?

So the message from the protesters is we don't want these Covid tests anymore.

We want to be able to move about.

So is there a sense that that message is breaking through to the government.

Do we know if they're going to ease off on some of these harsh restrictions that have been the source of all this anger.

So we've already seen health officials soften their tone with nice phrases like we need to have a more human centered approach to Covid in Guangzhou where there have been these major riots, they announced they're lifting lockdowns in some district and that they're no longer requiring district wide mass testing.

They have lifted lockdowns in some other areas as well.

But for the majority of the population there's really no change to the policy and china's kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place because the studies do show that if they were to completely open up there would be a mass number of deaths because they have not been able to vaccinate enough of the vulnerable elderly population and china's hospital capacity?

They don't have enough I.

C.

U.

Capacity instead of putting their resources into vaccinating the population.

Getting a more effective M RNA vaccination to the population.

Instead of boosting that hospital capacity they put all their resources to mass testing and quarantine and lockdowns.

So in reality this zero Covid it's it's not going away.

Right.

So I guess you know with that said what is the reality for people still in china?

Is there any kind of effort for people to remove themselves from this situation?

Find opportunities elsewhere?

What have you found on that front?

So there is a lot of sentiment among many chinese people that they want to emigrate.

They want to go to a different country.

But china has made it really hard for chinese nationals to leave this country.

Have you told your family where you are?

I did speak to one man who went to extreme lengths to get out of this country.

He flew from china to South America from there he motor cycled, he walked by foot, he bust thousands of miles to the US Mexico border.

You know he even trekked through the Panama rainforest and then he did illegally cross the border.

He is currently seeking asylum and he's hoping to live his life out in America.

He just couldn't take the restrictions.

The lockdowns anymore, which of course also made it harder for him to make ends meet and he does still have his Children in china but he's hoping to find some way any way to bring them to America with him.

Well, Selena thanks very much, really appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

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