Harsh lockdowns have united the Chinese
But ethnicity still divides them
“We are all in the same building, only the fire hasn’t reached us yet.” So said a protester in Hunan province on November 27th. He was referring to a blaze three days earlier that killed ten people in an apartment block in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang. Many Chinese believe the country’s covid restrictions contributed to the tragedy. So, in a rare moment of regional solidarity, hundreds of them took to the streets in cities across China, voicing their displeasure with the “zero-covid” policy.
This article appeared in the China section of the print edition under the headline “Solidarity, of a sort”
From the December 3rd 2022 edition
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