Yahoo Finance Protester who led calls for Xi Jinping to resign not seen since arrest three days ago
The first man to call for the resignation of Xi Jinping during the protests against China’s zero-Covid policy has not been seen since he was arrested by Chinese authorities on Sunday.
There has been no trace of the 27-year-old, who has been given the alias Wang, in the three days since police walked into the cocktail bar where he worked, handcuffed him and bundled him into the back of a van, neighbours told The Telegraph.
The bespectacled demonstrator was at his first-ever protest when he lifted his arm and shouted, “Communist Party?”.
“Down with it,” the crowd responded after gathering on Shanghai’s Wulumuqi Lu, which is a street named after Urumqi, where a fire had triggered the rare nationwide protests.
Wang shouted, “Xi Jinping?”. After the crowd shouted “Down with him”, Wang repeated the call three more times.
His neighbours, a family of fruit sellers outside Shanghai, admitted they knew what Wang had shouted. The son behind the counter said nervously, “I don’t know” when asked if he agreed with Wang.
In another sign that it is safer not to talk about politics in China, his father grinned politely but refused to say anything.
“We want our country to stop being a one-party dictatorship,” Wang told The Economist when interviewed on the sidelines of the Wulumqi Street protest.
“We want our basic human rights as citizens,” said Wang. “I’ve been feeling a strong sense of powerlessness lately, that there is no point in living. This is a philosophical idea, but the feeling is caused by the Communist Party.”
There has been no official paperwork for his arrest.
Anti-lockdown protests over the past week have amounted to the largest wave of civil disobedience the country has seen since its 1989 pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square.
Clashes broke out in China's southern city of Guangzhou on Tuesday night and continued into Wednesday.
Dozens of hazmat-clad police were seen advancing on demonstrations in Roman phalanx-style formation under the cover of transparent riot shields, in videos verified by AFP.
Protesters shouted and threw objects at police. Later, around a dozen people were filmed being taken away with their hands bound with cable ties.
China’s top security body this week called for a “crackdown” on the protests, which it described as being carried out by “hostile forces”.
But on Wednesday, authorities unexpectedly lifted Covid lockdown measures in more than half of Guangzhou’s districts - not including Haizu, where the clashes took place.
‘Oppose dictatorship, don’t be slaves’
Protests also broke out at two of Hong Kong’s universities and the city’s Central district.
Demonstrators held up blank sheets of white paper, a protest against censorship, and chanted slogans such as “No PCR tests but freedom!” and “Oppose dictatorship, don’t be slaves!”
“This is not a coincidence but highly organised,” Hong Kong’s security minister said as he urged residents not to participate in protests.
On Wednesday, Nicholas Burns, the US Ambassador to China, said: “We believe the Chinese people have a right to protest peacefully.“
Zhao Lijian, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said other nations should mind their own business.
“We hope they will first heed their own peoples’ voices and interests instead of pointing fingers at others,” he said.
As tensions continued, the news broke on Wednesday that Jiang Zemin, the former Chinese president, had died.
Jiang, who was 96, had been in office for a decade until 2003. He is credited with leading China out of isolation after the army quashed the peaceful protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Chinese social media immediately was flooded with tributes to Mr Jiang. However, on Twitter and in chat groups, some comparisons were made between the timing of Mr Jiang’s death and that of Hu Yaobang, the former Communist leader.
When Mr Hu died, in April 1989, the ensuing commemorations and demonstrations morphed into the student-led protests in Tiananmen Square.
