Chinese Cities Ease COVID Restrictions After Protesters Clash With Police

By Brenda Goh and Martin Quin Pollard

SHANGHAI/BEIJING (Reuters)—The giant Chinese cities of Guangzhou and Chongqing announced an easing of COVID curbs on Wednesday, a day after demonstrators in southern Guangzhou clashed with police amid a string of protests against the world’s toughest coronavirus restrictions.

The demonstrations, which spread over the weekend to Shanghai, Beijing and elsewhere, have become a show of public defiance unprecedented since President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012.

The southwestern city of Chongqing will allow close contacts of people with COVID-19, who fulfil certain conditions, to quarantine at home, a city official said.

Guangzhou, near Hong Kong, also announced an easing of curbs, but with record numbers of cases nationwide, there seems little prospect of a major U-turn in “zero-COVID” policy that Xi has said is saving lives and has proclaimed as one of his political achievements.

Some protesters and foreign security experts believe Wednesday’s death of former President Jiang Zemin, who led the country for a decade of rapid economic growth after the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989, might become a new rallying point for protest after three years of pandemic.

Shanghai medical company worker Ray Lei, in his 20s, said Jiang was sometimes compared positively to Xi, given his skills on the international stage and relative openness to the West.

“So as for Jiang Zemin’s death, we feel a sense of tragedy towards the future of China’s leadership,” said Lei, who took part in protests in Shanghai on Sunday.

Jiang’s legacy was being debated on protesters’ Telegram groups, with some saying it gave them a legitimate reason to gather.

“How similar is history,” read one protester’s post, referring to former party General Secretary Hu Yaobang, whose death in April 1989 was seen as one of the drivers of the nationwide protests that year.

“We can all go onto the streets today and lay chrysanthemums,” another said.

Announcing the lifting of lockdowns in parts of Guangzhou, a city hard-hit by the recent wave of infections, authorities did not mention the protests, and the district where Tuesday’s violence flared remained under tight control.

In one video of those clashes posted on Twitter, dozens of riot police clad in white protective suits and holding shields over their heads, advanced in formation over what appeared to be torn down lockdown barriers as objects flew at them.

Police were later seen escorting away a row of people in

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