” The Chinese pot had already been boiling for months and it begins to let go of the pressure, exclaims The cross. Numerous demonstrations of protest against the policy of “zero Covid”, imposed for three years by Beijing, broke out this weekend in several cities of China simultaneously, reports the newspaper. In Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan or Chengdu, in the Southwest, groups of several hundred people knocked down the containment banners and shouted their anger against the Xi Jinping regime. (…)
In Shanghai, on the night of Saturday to Sunday, demonstrators even dared to shout ‘Xi Jinping, resign!’ and also attacked the Chinese Communist Party. A very rare demonstration of hostility towards the president and the regime, in the economic capital of the country, subjected at the beginning of the year to an exhausting two-month confinement. »
Towards a revolution?
” The country’s double-lock has the same consequence as a pressure cooker being put on the fire. If you don’t release the pressure, it explodes, notice Release. Encouraged by the discipline of the population, the Xi Jinping regime thought it had everything planned by isolating the inhabitants of the cities – and even the countryside – and cutting off their access to social networks. He had not imagined the impact on young Chinese of the broadcasts of the Football World Cup, live from Qatar, which show crowds in freedom and jubilation, without masks. »
And Release to ask oneself: Can these manifestations of anger, the first of their kind since the Beijing Spring in 1989, coagulate and turn into a revolution? Thirty-three years ago, the uprising was bloodily suppressed, but the countries of the planet were less connected then. Three years ago, the same desire for freedom had been violently repressed in Hong Kong where calm had returned ‘thanks’ to confinement. Everything is still possible, concludes Libé, but this thirst for freedom in various points of the globe clearly shows that democracy, whatever the autocrats say about it, always makes the crowds dream. »
A youth in need of freedom
” It’s no longer China waking up, it’s the Chinese, exclaim The Latest News from Alsace. And this semantic shift could change the course of history. The unprecedented demonstrations that have been multiplying for a few days in the big cities of the People’s Republic testify to a deep movement, coming from afar and undoubtedly irreversible. The Hong Kong riots, the ‘zero Covid’ policy and the sharp slowdown in economic growth have transformed Chinese public opinion. (…) The aspirations of Chinese youth no longer differ from those of other countries. Social networks and the emergence, via music or images, of a universal culture, gradually lead to a single claim, that of freedom, this immaterial and therefore indestructible common good. Freedom to think, to choose, to create, to move: this is the program that today guides the steps of the rebels in Beijing, Shanghai or Nanjing. »
France: the 9e Covid wave…
Also on the front page, the Covid-19 in France: “ should we be worried about the 9e vague ? », wonders The Parisian. ” Masks have almost become a curiosity, and the coughing neighbor is (almost) no longer a source of anxiety. However, the 9e wave of Covid-19 is indeed there, notes the newspaper. Last Friday, more than 48,000 contaminations were recorded in 24 hours and the trend is on the rise. (…) For the moment, these figures do not reach the records of the beginning of the year, where we had counted up to 525,000 daily cases. »
So wonder again The Parisian“ what will this look like 9e vague ? A wavelet, or, on the contrary, to the tsunami which swept over the hospitals, as during the 2e wave, in November 2020, or the 5ein January, when the number of admissions was close to 3,000 per day? “Answer… We don’t really know… But there are several negative factors: the low vaccination recall rate, the cold which makes the virus circulate faster, and the abandonment of barrier gestures…