People in Beihai City, Guangxi Rushed to the Barriers to Protest, and the Authorities Lift Lockdown Overnight

On the afternoon of August 16th local time, the Beihai authorities announced at a pandemic conference that Beihai city had been “shifted to the normal pandemic prevention and control stage” from 0:00 on the 16th. The next step will be to “accelerate the resumption of normal production” and so on.

This “implementation first and then announced” shift seems to be a bit anomalous and sudden. In the 14th press conference, the Beihai authorities were still emphasizing that the pandemic prevention work “entered the final stage”, and vowed to “clean up” the virus. It also said that “this stage of the task is no less difficult than the societal Zero-Covid” and so on.

According to the online news, the reason for the authorities’ sudden shift was a citywide protest that broke out in the city on the night of the 15th. Internet users noted that all the fences separating the community were broken that evening as residents rushed to the street together to protest.

Several circulated videos on the Internet showed citizens of protesters standing on the street of Beihai, with the crowd chanting slogans together. Local police and pandemic prevention personnel were reduced to “bystanders”.

The local Internet users revealed that August 16th is the time of Beihai’s open fishing. The authorities scheduled an extension until September 16th, which resulted in public outrage. Due to the citywide protests, the panicked city government held an emergency meeting, lifted the lockdown overnight, removed the pandemic prevention barriers and other quarantine measures, opened the marketplace, and called off the next day’s Covid testing.

On social media, users mocked that “Dabai, dirty police, the health commission, and the rulers are all scared to death”. Then, they celebrated that Guangxi people have raised their “backbone which has bent for decades” and “firing the first shot against the national slavery and anti-pandemic”.