Tag: china

Xiaomi’s First-Ever Electric Vehicle ‘Modena’ Spotted Being Tested in Extreme Cold Conditions: Report

Xiaomi announced in 2022 that it would foray into the electric vehicle segment with the introduction of its first such EV scheduled for some time in 2024. According to a new report, the electric vehicle codenamed ‘Modena’ has been spotted being tested in snow and ice weather conditions in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, as suggested by leaked images revealed by the publication. According to the report, the Chinese manufacturer could be testing the electric vehicle’s battery performance in extreme cold conditions, and the effects of such conditions on the vehicle’s range.

According to the report by ArenaEV, Xiaomi’s upcoming and first-ever electric vehicle has been spotted being tested in extreme cold weather conditions in a location that is thought to be in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China. The report, citing a Chinese blogger, also suggested that Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun had joined the Xiaomi test-driving team for this. The company executive has previously been spotted expressing his enthusiasm in pushing the electric vehicle project to its goal, added the report.

The company executive had previously also shared Xiaomi’s first progress report on the Xiaomi Pilot Technology project for autonomous driving. The company had pledged to invest RMB 3.3 billion (nearly Rs. 3,897 crore) and hired over 500 experts from around the world to develop the in-house autonomous driving technology.

Xiaomi is also expected to invest another RMB 2 billion (nearly Rs. 2,400 crore) in the second phase of the project which will include ten upstream and downstream enterprises in the autonomous driving field, under which Xiaomi is expected to be in charge of core sensors, core actuators, domain controllers, and more.

Xiaomi Pilot Technology project is working to build a fleet of 140 test vehicle in its first phase. According to the ArenaEV report, Xiaomi had earlier been using BYD Han cars as test vehicles for its Xiaomi Pilot Technology testing. However, recently, the company was spotted using its own vehicles for testing on Chinese roads, and this is when the codename Modena came into the picture, added the report.

The latest images suggest that the Xiaomi Modena electric vehicle is a sedan, and will feature an aerodynamic shape complimented by a long hood and swooping roofline that drops gently toward the back of the car. The images also suggest ubiquitous retractable door handles and LiDAR sensors on the roof of the vehicle.

The Xiaomi Modena is tipped to be made available in three variants, with the first two entry models utilising BYD LFP ”blade” batteries, while the top-end model is expected to feature a CATL Qilin battery. Meanwhile, infotainment on the Modena is expected to be powered by Qualcomm’s latest 8295 chips which offer 30 TOPS of NPU computing power, added the report.

Xiaomi is expected to price the electric vehicle between $38,350 (roughly Rs. 31,20,500) and $51,650 (roughly Rs. 42,02,600), according to the report.

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TikTok offers to have third-party check if China spying on US users

TikTok has reportedly proposed to have an independent, third-party monitor check the social media app’s algorithms to determine if the Chinese government is accessing Americans’ user data.

As part of the reported plan, US-based tech entities such as Oracle would review the code governing how TikTok chooses the videos that users see and which videos are deleted.

The proposed reorganization is part of the ByteDance-owned app’s attempt to convince US lawmakers that it is not allowing Beijing to spy on American users of the popular video-sharing platform.

TikTok has also offered to create a subsidiary, TikTok US Data Security (USDS), which would report to an outside board of directors with a “primary fiduciary responsibility” to the US government, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The USDS would hire 2,500 people to monitor the app’s safety mechanisms. None of those hired would be Chinese nationals since the subsidiary would be beholden to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), according to the Journal.

CFIUS is a federal agency that operates under the auspices of the Treasury Department. It is tasked with reviewing transactions involving foreign investment in the US.

TikTok has been in talks with CFIUS for the past two years seeking to satisfy the Biden administration’s demands to implement safeguards that would protect Americans’ data from alleged spying.

A spokesperson for TikTok told the Journal: “We are not waiting for an agreement to be in place.”

TikTok has proposed a $1.5 billion reorganization that would allow third parties to monitor and safeguard the app’s algorithm.
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“We’ve made substantial progress on implementing that solution over the past year and look forward to completing that work to put these concerns to rest.”

If no agreement is reached, the Biden administration could force ByteDance to sell off the US division of TikTok or it could outright ban the app from the US altogether.

Several governors have moved to ban state employees from using TikTok on their government-issued devices.

ByteDance has long denied allegations that TikTok conducts espionage on behalf of the Chinese government.

TikTok has exploded in popularity in recent years, particularly among Gen Z millennials who have migrated away from dominant social media rivals such as Facebook and Instagram.

It is estimated that TikTok has more than 700 million active users worldwide — some 100 million of whom are in the United States, an astronomical figure considering that the app had just 11 million American users in 2018, according to CNBC.

Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy, told The Post: “Certain US politician’s comments are just groundless slanders.”

“The company concerned is a private enterprise that conducts business in the US in accordance with market principles and international rules and complies with US laws and regulations,” the spokesperson said.

“The US government should give it fair, just and non-discriminatory treatment.”

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Tencent Is Bringing Content Creators to WeChat to Challenge TikTok’s Dominance

On a hot summer’s day last year, the 90’s boy band Backstreet Boys clambered on to a stage in Pennsylvania and belted out hits as 44 million viewers tuned in from thousands of miles away for the online concert hosted by China’s WeChat Channels.

The show is just one of many events held by WeChat owner Tencent to promote the app’s short-video platform – described by the tech giant’s founder Pony Ma as “the hope of the company”.

Tencent Holdings Ltd has tapped other entertainers too like Taiwan’s Jay Chou and Irish boy band Westlife for livestreamed concerts and, according to a source, has set up a team to build a community of content creators as it seeks to challenge the dominance of ByteDance, the owner of TikTok and Douyin, and Kuaishou in the short-video business.

“Tencent hopes it can turn Channels into the next WeChat Pay. It has a shot at it. But it is also going to be difficult,” said Liao Xuhua, a senior analyst at research firm Analysys.

WeChat Pay became the second-biggest player in China’s mobile payment market within a year of its 2013 launch, behind Alipay which is owned by Jack Ma-founded Ant Group.

Two sources familiar with Tencent said the importance of Channels has been repeatedly communicated within the company.

The two-year old platform has been a bright spot for Tencent in an otherwise dismal 2022 when revenue for its other products, such as games and payment services, were slammed by tighter gaming regulations and strict COVID-19 curbs.

The total number of views on Channels surged more than three-fold last year, Tencent said this week as it revealed its latest growth figures for the platform.

Daily active creators and video uploads more than doubled.

Gross merchandise value (GMV) from livestreaming e-commerce, where telegenic personalities hawk goods online in real time, jumped more than 800 percent on Channels, the company said.

It did not disclose absolute figures.

A LatePost report says Channels’ daily transactions from livestreamed sales pitches reached more than CNY100 million ($15 million, or roughly Rs. 122 crore) in September 2022 for the first time, indicating an annual rate of about CNY36 billion (roughly Rs. 43,000 crore).

But Douyin was already aiming to bring its GMV to over 1 trillion yuan ($155 billion or roughly Rs. 12 lakh crore) in 2021, a six-fold jump from 2020 levels, sources said at the time. ByteDance does not publicly disclosee official GMV numbers.

Integrating products

Tencent has been integrating many of its products, ranging from Tencent Meetings to WeChat Mini Program, with Channels to help creators livestream content just like the U.S. band Backstreet Boys.

Tencent Meetings is a Zoom-like teleconference service while mini programs are like apps on Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating systems but less data intensive and run within WeChat.

An integration would allow, for example, a podcast host to conduct an interview on Meetings and livestream it on Channels. If the host recommends a product during the chat, a link can pop up on the screen to take viewers to a Mini Program where they can buy the product using WeChat Pay.

Tencent has also slashed the threshold for monetisation on Channels, allowing users with as few as 10 followers, versus 1,000 earlier, to start making money through advertisements.

TikTok requires content creators to have more than 10,000 followers to start monetising.

Channels has also opened up ad opportunities “like never before”, said Li Yikai, general manager of Americas and EMEA at ad agency Nativex, versus WeChat that pushes a few ads a day.

“When you are already scrolling and come across an ad, you don’t think twice about it. So naturally you come across a lot more ads with short videos,” Li said.

In November, Tencent President Martin Lau said Channels’ advertising revenue was on track to reach 1 billion yuan in the fourth quarter of 2022.

For TikTok and Douyin, research firm Insider Intelligence estimated in April last year that ad revenues would together reach more than $30 billion (roughly Rs. 2.4 lakh crore) for 2022.

Channels has also started charging e-commerce merchants a 1 percent to 5 percent commission fee from this month.

Douyin has been charging 1 percent to 10 percent since 2020.

Rivalry

While some analysts see Channels as Tencent’s best chance to catch up with ByteDance, others believe it will be tough for it to become as big as Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.

“When you have to start from being a social network app and then enter into the short-video space, you have to build up a whole e-commerce system to support it … I won’t say they can’t get there but it’s very difficult,” Analysys’ Liao said.

But Shawn Yang, managing director at research group Blue Lotus Capital Advisors, is bullish on Channels given the potential of WeChat’s traffic.

WeChat, China’s most popular chat app, has more than a billion active users.

“For example, in Douyin or Kuaishou, you won’t be able to ask your viewers to add you on WeChat. But on Channels, you can quickly add somebody on WeChat,” Yang said.

“This is very beneficial to those who already have their own private traffic on WeChat,” he said.

© Thomson Reuters 2023

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Turkey Joins China, India in Marking CBDC Milestones on Wider Scale Before 2022 Wraps Up

The year 2022, while not having been positively eventful for the crypto sector, did emerge as a milestone year for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). Turkey has become the latest member of the CBDC club, that has touched a significant point in its CBDC trials. The Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT), that started its CBDC trials earlier this year, has completed its first phase before the year of 2022 ends. Turkey’s CBDC is named the Digital Turkish Lira.

For now, Turkey has been conducting closed circuit pilot tests of its CBDC. In the first three months of 2023, the CBRT plans to take this CBDC trial to select banks and fintech companies, which will continue till the end of next year.

“Studies on the legal aspects of the Digital Turkish Lira demonstrate that digital identification is of critical importance for the project. Therefore, studies on the economic and legal framework of the Digital Turkish Lira as well as its technological requirements will be prioritised throughout 2023,” the Turkish central bank said in an official statement.

Built on the blockchain, the CBDC of any nation is just a digital representation of its fiat currency. As opposed to traditional digital transactions, blockchain networks record all transactions with more transparency while keeping them shut to being altered or changed. CBDC transactions could prevent cases of financial frauds.

This year, a bunch of nations expanded their roots into the CBDC sector.

India, for instance, marked some crucial landmarks in its CBDC trials. Earlier this month, India’s digital rupee CBDC, officially stepped into its retail trial period in four cities — New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Bhubaneswar in partnership with the State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, Yes Bank, and IDFC.

The RBI, that is overseeing the digital rupee trials, is testing the CBDC with select merchants and customers for day-to-day retail purchases.

The official roll out of India’s CBDC could see the light of the day sometime in 2023.

China also, that launched its e-CNY CBDC for broader trials this year, has begun to push its adoption among the masses.

This week, the Chinese authorities introduced a feature for existing CBDC users to let them send financial gifts to their friends and family as ‘red packets’. Considered as a symbol of ‘good luck’, the ‘red packets’ — also called the ‘Hongbao’ — are used for presenting people with money as a gesture of luck around festivals in the Asian nation.

Kazakhstan and Pakistan are looking to facilitate the gradual roll out their respective CBDCs around 2025.

Japan and South Korea also are moving forward with its CBDC pilots.

Meanwhile, some countries have already released their CBDCs in full force this year.

Nigeria, for instance, launched its CBDC named the eNaira earlier this year. In a bid to promote the use of this CBDC, the Nigerian government has banned weekly ATM withdrawals over $225 (roughly Rs. 18,565) and daily ATM withdrawal at $45 (roughly Rs. 3,710) in the African nation.

Jamaica also released its Jam-Dex CBDC for commercial uses.

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China Set to Launch State-Backed NFT Marketplace on Special ‘Cultural Protection’ Chain

China, that is rather infamous for keeping an extremely restrictive approach towards the crypto sector, is taking small steps into exploring the digital assets sector. The country is geared-up to launch an official, state-backed NFT marketplace, that would let Chinese NFT traders to dabble in the space, but under the oversight of China’s government. A launch ceremony for this marketplace has been slated for January 1. It will be held in China’s capital city of Beijing at a time when the country is yet again, riddled with the COVID-19 crisis.

Called the ‘China Digital Asset Trading Platform’, the initiative is aimed at creating a safe ecosystem for the secondary sales of NFTs, which if not monitored, can dangerously expose buyers to hack attacks and scams.

Three state-owned entities — China Technology Exchange, China Cultural Relics Exchange Center, and Huaban Digital Copyright Service Center Co., Ltd — have collectively created this NFT trading platforms, keeping it in alignment with China’s laws and regulations, China’s Sina News said in its report.

Instead of using an existing blockchain like Ethereum or Solana, the Chinese government has decided to base this NFT platform on a specially curated blockchain, named the ‘China Cultural Heritage Chain’.

The blockchain was reportedly initiated by the China Cultural Relics Exchange Center, aimed at ensuring the copyright protection of the cultural digital sector.

In September last year, China imposed a blanket ban on all crypto-related activities.

The government at the time, had not decided a concrete stance on the categorisation of NFTs.

In this grey zone, the secondary sales of digital collectibles had begun to pick pace in China.

In March this year, WeChat public accounts linked to NFT trading, were blocked by its parent company Tencent.

“In order to prevent the risk of virtual currency trading speculation, the WeChat public platform has recently standardised and rectified public accounts and small programs for speculation and secondary sales of digital collections,” WeChat had said in a statement at the time.

Despite increasing the oversight on the virtual assets sector, China is gradually tapping in to explore the potential of the blockchain technology.

The country is already widely testing its e-CNY CBDC, which is a blockchain representation of China’s fiat currency.

This week, the Chinese authorities introduced a feature for existing CBDC users to let them send financial gifts to their friends and family as ‘red packets’. Considered as a symbol of ‘good luck’, the ‘red packets’ — also called the ‘Hongbao’ — are used for presenting people with money as a gesture of luck around festivals in the Asian nation.

China is still not onboard with allowing cryptocurrencies to penetrate its financial systems.

Along with the volatility of the crypto sector and the anonymity of transactions crypto offers, the electricity required to keep crypto-related operations up and running had become a matter of concern for the Chinese authorities before all activities around that sector was banned.

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Tesla Said to Run Reduced Output in Shanghai Plant in January: Report

Tesla plans to run a reduced production schedule at its Shanghai plant in January, extending the reduced output it began this month into next year, according to an internal schedule reviewed by Reuters.

Tesla will run production for 17 days in January between January 3 to January 19 and will stop electric vehicle output from January 20 to January 31 for an extended break for Chinese New Year, according to the plan seen by Reuters.

Tesla did not specify a reason for the production slowdown in its output plan. It was also not clear whether work would continue outside the assembly lines for the Model 3 and Model Y at the plant during the scheduled downtime. It has not been established practice for Tesla to shut down operations for an extended period for Chinese New Year.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

Tesla suspended production at its Shanghai plant on Saturday, pulling forward an established plan to pause most work at the plant in the last week of December, Reuters has reported.

Tesla’s latest production cuts at Shanghai come amid a rising wave of infections after China stepped back from its zero-COVID policy earlier this month. That move has been welcomed by businesses although it has disrupted manufacturing operations outside Tesla.

Like other automakers, Tesla has also faced a downturn in demand in China, the world’s largest auto market. Earlier this month, Tesla offered an additional incentive for buyers taking possession of vehicles in December. The company has cut prices for Model 3 and Model Y cars by up to 9 percent in China, in addition to a subsidy for insurance costs.

The Shanghai factory, the most important manufacturing hub for Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company, kept normal operations during the last week of December last year and took a three-day break for Chinese New Year.

The Jan. 21 to Jan. 27 period in 2023 is a public holiday in China for Chinese New Year.

Tesla’s Shanghai plant, a complex that employs some 20,000 workers. accounted for more than half of Tesla’s output in the first three quarters of 2022.

Tesla has set a target for growth of 50 percent in output and electric vehicle deliveries in 2022. Analysts expect output to fall short of that goal at closer to about 45 percent, based on forecasts for the soon-to-end fourth quarter.

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Senate passes bill that bans TikTok on government devices

Legislation banning the use of TikTok on government devices passed the Senate on Wednesday amid concerns data obtained by the popular social-media app may fall into the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. 

The “No TikTok on Government Devices Act,” sponsored by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), would prohibit individuals from downloading or using TikTok on phones, tablets, and computers issued by the US government or government corporations.

The bill passed after no senators objected to the measure. It must still pass the House before heading to President Biden’s desk. 

“TikTok is a Trojan Horse for the Chinese Communist Party. It’s a major security risk to the United States, and until it is forced to sever ties with China completely, it has no place on government devices,” Hawley said in a statement. “States across the U.S. are banning TikTok on government devices. It’s time for Joe Biden and the Democrats to help do the same.”

At least five states — Maryland, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas — have banned government agencies from using TikTok over security concerns. 

New York lawmakers also introduced a bill this week that would ban state employees and contractors from downloading the app onto government-issued electronics.

At the federal level, another anti-TikTok bill was introduced in Congress this week that seeks to ban the social media platform from the US altogether. 

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) introduced the Averting the National Threat of Internet Surveillance, Oppressive Censorship and Influence and Algorithmic Learning by the Chinese Communist Party (ANTI-SOCIAL CCP) Act on Tuesday .

Rubio and Gallagher’s bill would ban “all transactions from any social media company in, or under the influence of, China, Russia and several other foreign countries of concern,” such as Iran, North Korea and Venezuela.

TikTok’s parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance LTD, is required under Chinese law to disclose its data to the Chinese Communist Party, according to Rubio. 

“This isn’t about creative videos — this is about an app that is collecting data on tens of millions of American children and adults every day,” Rubio said in a statement. “We know it’s used to manipulate feeds and influence elections. We know it answers to the People’s Republic of China.”

TikTok claims it has never shared U.S. user data with the CCP and wouldn’t if asked.

A TikTok spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that Hawley’s legislation “does nothing to advance U.S. national security interests. We hope that rather than continuing down that road, he will urge the administration to move forward on an agreement that would actually address his concerns.”

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AIIMS Delhi Cyberattack Originated From China; Data From Five Servers Successfully Retrieved, MoHFW Says

The AIIMS Delhi cyberattack, which crippled the online services of Delhi’s largest medical institute, originated from China, according to the FIR. Hackers breached five out of 40 physical servers, and the data from all five servers has now been successfully retrieved, senior officials from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India (MoHFW) said on Wednesday. 

“AIIMS Delhi server attack was by the Chinese, FIR details that the attack had originated from China. Of 100 servers (40 physical and 60 virtual), five physical servers were successfully infiltrated by the hackers. The damage would have been far worse but is now contained. Data in the five servers have been successfully retrieved now,” said the source from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW).

AIIMS Delhi first reported a failure in its servers on November 23. Two of the analysts deployed to look after the servers’ securities have also been suspended for the alleged breach of cybersecurity.

AIIMS authorities in a statement issued stated that the e-Hospital data has been restored.

“The eHospital data has been restored on the servers. The network is being sanitised before the services can be restored. The process is taking some time due to the volume of data and a large number of servers/computers for the hospital services. Measures are being taken for cyber security,” they had said. “All hospital services, including outpatient, in-patient, laboratories, etc continue to run on manual mode,” the statement had said.

Earlier this month, a special cell of Delhi Police launched an investigation into the attack on the computer system at AIIMS Delhi.

According to official sources, a team of the Central Forensic Lab (CFSL) has been pressed into service to check the infected server of the AIIMS Delhi to identify the source of the malware attack.

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China easing ‘zero-COVID’ policy after protests

China is finally easing its brutal “zero-COVID” policies after nearly a week of the biggest uprising in decades.

Vice Premier Sun Chunlan, who oversees COVID efforts, signaled the change Wednesday — as numerous regions also started lifting lockdowns, which had forced people into state-run facilities and left whole cities effectively shut down over just one detected case.

Speaking at the National Health Commission, Sun said that it was time to change the approach nearly three years after the contagion was first detected in Wuhan.

“The country is facing a new situation and new tasks in epidemic prevention and control as the pathogenicity of the Omicron virus weakens, more people are vaccinated and experience in containing the virus is accumulated,” Sun said in comments reported in state media.

The easing comes after nearly three years of brutal lockdowns that see whole cities shuttered over even just one case.
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Sun also urged further “optimization” of testing, treatment and quarantine policies, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.

Unusually, there was no mention of the country’s cornerstone “zero-COVID” approach, and acknowledgment of the weakening risk was a sharp contrast to signaling over most of the past three years.

Sources told Reuters that official announcements of further nationwide policy changes will be made in the coming days.

“Sun’s speech, in addition to the notable easing of COVID control measures … sends yet another strong signal that the zero-COVID policy will end within the next few months,” analysts at Nomura said in a research note.

“These two events perhaps point to the beginning of the end of zero-COVID.”

Several cities announced the end to measures that include daily testing.
Getty Images

ANZ Research analysts also told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that the remarks “could signal that China is beginning to consider the end of its stringent zero-Covid policy.”

“We believe that Chinese authorities are shifting to a ‘living with Covid’ stance, as reflected in new rules that allow people to do ‘home isolation’ instead of being ferried away to quarantine facilities,” the analysts said.

The changes have already allowed more freedom in several areas, including Guangzhou, where 24 hours earlier protesters clashed with riot cops.
CNS/AFP via Getty Images

The change came after protests that started last week quickly turned from anger at the policies to calls for President Xi Jinping to step down.

Since then, there have been 51 protests across 24 cities, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) — the most since the 1989 uprising calling for democracy ended in bloodshed in Tiananmen Square.

The historic uprising saw 51 protests in 34 cities.
ASPI

Late Tuesday, protesters clashed with hazmat suit-wearing cops in Guangzhou — one of the areas that then lifted temporary lockdowns within 24 hours of the alarming scenes.

Authorities in at least seven districts of the sprawling manufacturing hub said they were lifting temporary lockdowns, with one allowing the reopening of schools, restaurants and businesses, including cinemas.

Cities including Chongqing and Zhengzhou also announced easings.

The Chinese capital, Beijing, also said it would scale back daily testing requirements — a tedious mainstay of life under zero-Covid.

The elderly, those who work from home, students and teachers in online education and others who do not leave home frequently are now exempt from daily tests, officials said Wednesday.

Beijing residents still require a negative Covid test taken within 48 hours to enter public places such as cafes, restaurants and shopping malls, however.

With a heavy police presence across many cities, there was no indication of protests on Thursday.

The easing of restrictions comes despite China battling its worst COVID-19 outbreak of the past three years, having earlier credited the “zero-COVID” approach for containing the contagion.

The country reported 35,800 domestic covid cases on Thursday, most of them asymptomatic.

With Post wires

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COVID protests erupt in China’s Xinjiang after deadly fire

Rare protests broke out in China’s far western Xinjiang region, with crowds shouting at hazmat-suited guards after a deadly fire triggered anger over their prolonged COVID-19 lockdown as nationwide infections set another record.

Crowds chanted “End the lockdown!”, pumping their fists in the air as they walked down a street, according to videos circulated on Chinese social media on Friday night. Reuters verified the footage was published from the Xinjiang capital Urumqi.

Videos showed people in a plaza singing China’s national anthem with its lyric, “Rise up, those who refuse to be slaves!” while others shouted that they wanted to be released from lockdowns.

China has put the vast Xinjiang region under some of the country’s longest lockdowns, with many of Urumqi’s 4 million residents barred from leaving their homes for as long as 100 days. The city reported about 100 new cases each of the past two days.

Guards wearing hazmat suits are lined up blocking protestors from walking further down a street in Xinjiang, China.
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Xinjiang is home to 10 million Uyghurs. Rights groups and Western governments have long accused Beijing of abuses against the mainly Muslim ethnic minority, including forced labor in internment camps. China strongly rejects such claims.

The Urumqi protests followed a fire in a high-rise building there that killed 10 on Thursday night.

Authorities have said the building’s residents had been able to go downstairs, but videos of emergency crews’ efforts, shared on Chinese social media, led many internet users to surmise that residents could not escape in time because the building was partially locked down.

Urumqi officials abruptly held a news conference in the early hours of Saturday, denying that COVID measures had hampered escape and rescue but saying they would investigate further. One said residents could have escaped faster if they had better understood fire safety.

‘BLAME THE VICTIM’

Dali Yang, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, said such a “blame-the-victim” attitude would make people angrier. “Public trust will just sink lower,” he told Reuters.

Users on China’s Weibo platform described the incident as a tragedy that sprang out of China’s insistence on sticking to its zero-COVID policy and something that could happen to anyone. Some lamented its similarities to the deadly September crash of a COVID quarantine bus.

The protests are in response to the serious lockdowns imposed on the city after a record number of COVID cases.
Video Obtained via REUTERS

“Is there not something we can reflect on to make some changes,” said an essay that went viral on WeChat on Friday, questioning the official narrative on the Urumqi apartment fire.

China defends President Xi Jinping’s signature zero-COVID policy as life-saving and necessary to prevent overwhelming the healthcare system. Officials have vowed to continue with it despite the growing public pushback and its mounting toll on the world’s second-biggest economy.

While the country recently tweaked its measures, shortening quarantines and taking other targeted steps, this coupled with rising cases has caused widespread confusion and uncertainty in big cities, including Beijing, where many residents are locked down at home.

China recorded 34,909 daily local cases, low by global standards but the third record in a row, with infections spreading numerous cities, prompting widespread lockdowns and other curbs on movement and business.

Protestors were heard shouting “End the Lockdown!” while pumping their fists walking through the streets.
Video Obtained via REUTERS

Shanghai, China’s most populous city and financial hub, tightened testing requirements on Saturday for entering cultural venues such as museums and libraries, requiring people to present a negative COVID test taken within 48 hours, down from 72 hours earlier.

Beijing’s Chaoyang Park, popular with runners and picnickers, shut again after having briefly reopened.

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