Interesting.

In a break in decades-long tradition, delegates are likely to hand Mr Xi a third term as party chief.

 

Zero-Covid was a “people’s war to stop the spread of the virus”, he said.

 

The policy has saved lives, but also exacted a punishing toll on the Chinese people and economy.

 

There is increasing public fatigue over lockdowns and travel restrictions.

Same, dude… same.

SHENZHEN, China (Reuters) -When COVID-19 case numbers started ticking up in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen last week, Robin Chen got in his car and fled to nearby Huizhou.

 

It wasn’t because he feared the virus – many of his friends overseas had caught it and recovered – but he didn’t want to lose his freedom again as speculation swirled that Shenzhen was headed for its second lockdown in six months.

 

“I do hope and think there is no reason for our government to continue this policy because it is simply unsustainable,” he said after playing golf and surfing in coastal Huizhou.

The “nice” Communism of China, if such a thing ever existed, has fallen away and old-fashioned totalitarianism is back in Vogue in the Middle Kingdom.

Before last year, annual candlelight vigils had been lawfully held in Hong Kong since 1990, a year after soldiers and tanks rolled through Tiananmen Square in the Chinese capital and quashed a student-led protest for democratic reforms. Myriad questions still surround the Chinese government’s handling of the crackdown, which is said to have resulted in the deaths of hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of demonstrators and several soldiers.

 

Members of the public and civil servants who participate in next month’s memorial will be classified as “non-patriots,” and serving councilors or legislators face “immediate disqualification,” said HK01’s report, which cited persons with knowledge of the matter.

 

It said Hong Kong’s newly amended Basic Law—the city’s mini-constitution—means those who take part in the candlelight vigil may fail to meet the government’s “loyalty” requirement and have “no political future” in the semi-autonomous territory.

 

“Beijing will take unprecedented heavy-handed measures to handle matters” related to the event, which, like last year, will be considered an “unauthorized gathering,” it added. A heavy police presence is expected, as are “mass arrests” and prosecutions, the website said.

 

The strict enforcement by Hong Kong authorities is believed to be linked to upcoming events in Beijing, where Chinese leader Xi Jinping plans to lead the country in a landmark celebration for the centennial of the Communist Party of China on July 1.

Tragic.

The government denies that it is attempting to alter the demographics of its far-western region and says the job transfers are designed to raise incomes and alleviate chronic rural unemployment and poverty.

 

But our evidence suggests that – alongside the re-education camps built across Xinjiang in recent years – the policy involves a high risk of coercion and is similarly designed to assimilate minorities by changing their lifestyles and thinking.

 

Horrific.

Horrific.

Even as Wuhan and the rest of China has mostly returned to ordinary life, Xinjiang’s lockdown is backed by a vast surveillance apparatus that has turned the region into a digital police state. Over the past three years, Xinjiang authorities have swept a million or more Uighurs, Kazakhs and other ethnic minorities into various forms of detention, including extrajudicial internment camps, under a widespread security crackdown.

After being detained for over a month, the Uighur woman was released and locked into her home. Conditions are now better, she told the AP, but she is still under lockdown, despite regular tests showing she is free of the virus.

Once a day, she says, community workers force traditional medicine in white unmarked bottles on her, saying she’ll be detained if she doesn’t drink them. The AP saw photos of the bottles, which match those in images from another Xinjiang resident and others circulating on Chinese social media.

Authorities say the measures taken are for the well-being of all residents, though they haven’t commented on why they are harsher than those taken elsewhere. The Chinese government has struggled for decades to control Xinjiang, at times clashing violently with many of the region’s native Uighurs, who resent Beijing’s heavy-handed rule.