Observers argue that the ongoing protests in China are the largest since 1989, when pro-democracy movements led to the infamous Tiananmen Square massacre.
“Unrest is actually commonplace in China, but demonstrations are usually small, localized and easily quashed,” Dominic Waghon writes.
Waghon submits that the size and scale of the protests and the persistence of the protesters should worry Chinese political leadership.
“The authoritarian Chinese Communist Party has not seen a threat like this since the pro-democracy movements of the late 1980s that culminated in the brutal Tiananmen Square massacre, he says.
Observers like Waghon believe that the government’s zero-COVID policy has played a big part in provoking the protests.
Weighing in on the impact of recent Covid-inspired lockdown in China, Professor Kerry Brown of King’s College London believes Chinese government has to quite quickly put in place emergency measures for the health service to take a kind of spike in numbers that might need to be hospitalized.
“If you continue with the policies that have been in place at the moment, you’re going to get more and more of these protests and they could morph into something far more threatening,” he added.