- By Stephen McDonell
- China correspondent
4 hours ago
Image source, Portal/Social Media Grab
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This is the second round of protests in Wuhan in seven days
Crowds of retirees in China have once again taken to the streets to protest cuts to their medical services.
They rallied for the second time on Wednesday in Wuhan, where Covid was first detected, and in the northeastern city of Dalian.
The second round of protests in seven days is putting pressure on President Xi Jinping’s government just weeks before the annual National People’s Congress that will inaugurate a new leadership team.
The first protests took place in Wuhan on February 8 after provincial authorities announced they would cut the amount of medical expenses retirees can claim back from the government.
Social media footage shows the protesters are mostly elderly pensioners, who say it comes at a time of rising healthcare costs.
Although such health insurance issues are handled at the provincial level, protests have spread to different parts of the country in what appears to be a renewed belief in the power of demonstrating in China.
Late last year, thousands of young Chinese took part in protests that eventually forced the government to lift its strict zero-Covid measures — people had grown weary of the mass testing and sudden, sweeping lockdowns that had shattered the economy.
But the abrupt policy change put a huge strain on China’s medical system as the coronavirus spread rapidly across the country. It resulted in an unknown number of deaths and BBC reporting seemed to show that the vast majority of those who died were elderly.
The changes to health care benefits for retirees, which officials have dubbed reforms, come just as China emerges from this brutal Covid wave.
The plan was sold as a way to balance reimbursement levels to extend coverage to more areas. But criticism of the plan on social media has included a widespread view that Chinese officials are trying to recoup the vast amounts of money spent on mandatory Covid testing and other pandemic measures.
Officials in both Wuhan and Dalian said they were unaware of the recent protests and therefore had no comment to make. Calls to local police stations went unanswered.
Radio Free Asia reported that retired iron and steel workers made up a significant portion of the original protest group in Wuhan.
Using existing social media connections may help explain how these gatherings were coordinated in a country where organizing anti-government dissent in any form is difficult and can result in severe penalties, including imprisonment.
Video clips shared on social media showed elderly protesters singing the global communist anthem, the Internationale. In the past, this song was used to indicate that protesters are not anti-government or anti-communist, they just want a solution to their grievances.
A shopkeeper who witnessed Wednesday’s protests in Wuhan told the BBC that police blocked access to the area on either side of a nearby road to prevent more people from joining the hundreds of elderly protesters who were already chanting slogans.
Three years of the pandemic crisis, followed by a tumultuous exit from zero-Covid, has resulted in significant public dissatisfaction with China’s health policies.
Image source, Getty Images
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China’s zero-Covid measures included mass testing
Mr Xi had put his personal stamp of approval on the country’s Covid improvement policy, and the party struggled to explain why such a sudden about-face was necessary.
The Chinese government had also publicly mocked other countries for opening up too soon, claiming they had unnecessarily sacrificed their people in doing so.
It then reversed course and abandoned its own restrictions at an even greater rate than other nations had done, and did so after maintaining lockdowns and other harsh measures for much longer than anywhere else in the world.
Many here today believe that livelihoods were unnecessarily destroyed as a result.
On China’s Twitter-like social media platform Weibo, the hashtag #healthinsurance – in Chinese – has garnered millions of hits but has been removed from the site’s “hot topics” section.
The hashtag matching the location of the recent protests in Wuhan – Zhongshan Park – has been censored and photos purporting to be from the demonstration have been removed.
But even with China’s massive censorship apparatus springing into action, there’s still plenty of support for the protesting retirees expressed on social media.
Beijing must find a way to resolve the issue if it is to avoid further public uproar.