Diplomat blames ‘foreign forces’ for boosting China’s Covid-19 protests

Last month’s protests in China were caused by local government failures to manage Covid-19, but were soon “taken advantage of” by foreign forces, Beijing’s ambassador to France has said. A transcript of Lu Shaye’s comments to journalists at a reception on December 7 was published on the embassy’s website and marks the first time a Chinese official has talked publicly about the rare scenes that erupted in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong and other places. “In the beginning, I think the Chinese public initiated the protests to express their dissatisfaction [with] how local governments have failed to fully implement the central government’s policies. But the protests were soon being taken advantage of by foreign forces,” Lu said. “I think the ‘real protests’ only happened on the first day. Foreign forces came into play already on the second day,” said Lu, whose fiery remarks have made him one of the most high profile of China’s “wolf warrior” diplomats. Over 10 days in late November, protesters called for an end to prolonged lockdowns and Covid-19 testing. Some held up blank sheets of white paper, while a few called for the Communist Party and even President Xi Jinping to step down. The spark for the protests was a fire in a block of flats under lockdown in the western region of Xinjiang, in which at least 10 people were reported to have died. The deaths were widely blamed on delays caused by Covid-19 restrictions, an allegation denied by the local government. The Chinese public has repeatedly expressed its fury in the past three years over a succession of safety incidents caused by the country’s stringent pandemic controls but moves to ease restrictions in early November were interpreted differently around the country. The 20 measures issued by the central government on November 11 to guide local officials included shortened centralised quarantine times for close contacts and travellers from abroad from seven to five days. But, while there are national Covid-19 control guidelines, local governments were authorised to formulate their own standards on sealing places off for quarantine and close contact tracing. “Some local governments did not fully understand the central government’s policies … we had strict policies in the past but when the central government asked to ease them, they were unable to fully understand it in the first place,” Lu said. “Even if the protests were not initiated or instigated by foreign or anti-China forces, they were at least being made use of [by them]. These forces always attempt to politicise protests,” he said. “No country is perfect and all governments have problems. For us, we need to make corrections. As for foreign forces, they want to destroy China, and overthrow the Chinese Communist Party. These are the essential differences.” Lu said some Chinese people had been “bought over by foreign forces” and also accused the French media of “exaggerated reporting” for describing the protests as the largest since the Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in 1989. “This has nothing to do with the political turmoil in 1989, it was someone who intentionally linked the two things up,” he said. Lu also said the protests had the “smell of colour revolutions”, adding that these have been happening frequently in developing countries in the past. From anger to hopelessness: economic strain of Covid policy tests China’s limits Beijing has often accused “foreign forces” of being behind anti-government protests, including the months-long disturbances in Hong Kong in 2019. According to the embassy transcript, Lu was repeatedly asked by reporters to specify who the “foreign forces” were, but while he referred to “countries” and “organisations” he refused to name them. According to senior EU officials, Xi told European Council President Charles Michel during their meeting in Beijing on December 1 that the protesters were “mainly students” who were “frustrated” after three years of the pandemic. Soon afterwards, China embarked on its biggest nationwide relaxation of its zero-Covid policy, rolling back PCR testing and essentially ending mass lockdowns imposed from close contact tracing. Since the new policy was introduced last week, China has stopped announcing case numbers while infections are spreading quickly. Lu said the vaccination rate for China’s elderly population aged 61 to 79 is 83 per cent, but lower for those aged 80 and over, at 65 per cent. But he gave little hope for the prospect that China will import foreign vaccines. China, which has only been vaccinating its population with traditional inactivated vaccines, has sought to develop its own version of an mRNA vaccine, but progress has been slow. Chinese cities relax virus testing in sign of shift in Covid policy A home-grown mRNA vaccine called AWcorna became available on the mainland at the end of 2021 but has yet to receive regulatory approval. China has not licensed any Western vaccines for the general public. BioNTech filed for a Chinese licence for its mRNA vaccine last year, but it has so far not been granted. “Our inactivated vaccines were approved by the World Health Organization from the beginning, but Europe did not accept us. Now that China has its own mRNA vaccine, we no longer need Western vaccines,” Lu said. Lu told reporters he was vaccinated in France with the Pfizer mRNA vaccine.