Angry Shanghai residents have begun staging defiant acts of civil disobedience in protest against Beijing’s brutality. Some dismantle barbed-wire fences, others bang their cooking pots on the balconies. In the video Voice of April, Shanghainese residents depict the endless suffering of people under the zero-Covid policy. The video went viral despite the CCP’s watertight censorship. Shanghai-based rapper Astro released a song, “New Slave,” to criticize the government’s abuse of power and its neglect of human life. More and more people have come out to sing the national anthem — in particular the line “Arise! Ye who refuse to be bond slaves!” Ironically, this has led Chinese authorities to censor its own national anthem. Some local party chiefs resigned, and neighborhood committee members abandoned their posts. Shanghai residents have formed a self-assistance and self-governance commission, unequivocally demanding democracy and freedom, and urging mass civil disobedience until Beijing ends its inhumane zero-Covid policy. On the night of April 24, people in many districts of Shanghai took to the streets to protest.

Shanghai is not the only Chinese municipality where residents are enraged by the regime’s trampling of human rights. According to a Chinese report, of 293 large- and middle-sized cities in China, 188 (around 64 percent) have confirmed new cases since March. All are implementing the aggressive zero-Covid policy. We have heard calls and cries for help from other cities. Xi Jinping’s mismanagement of China’s pandemic control today is as bad as, if not worse than, the handling of the initial outbreak in Wuhan in 2020.

The Chinese government has characterized its aggressive zero-Covid policy as necessary in the great struggle against the West, to prove the superiority of the Chinese socialist system, which will determine the fate of the CCP. But in reality, like all dictators, Xi adamantly refuses to admit his mistakes.