As millions have been affected by nearly three years of mass testing, quarantines and lockdowns, United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on Wednesday, called China’s “repressive” action against the protesters over the Covid lockdown “a sign of weakness.”
During an interview with Andrea Mitchell of NBC, Blinken said, “I think any country where you see people trying to speak out, trying to speak up, to protest peacefully, to make known their frustrations, whatever the issue is – in any country where we see that happening and then we see the government take massive repressive action to stop it, that’s not a sign of strength, that’s a sign of weakness,” according to the statement released by US Department of State. In responding to a question about the protest in China over the covid lockdown, the US Secretary of State said, “Well, I can’t speak to what this says about his standing. But what I can say is this: First, the zero-COVID policy that we’ve seen in China is not something that we would do, and we’ve been focused on making sure that people have safe and effective vaccines, that we have tested, that we have treatment, and that has proven effective.”
He further said that China has to figure out a way that answers the health needs and also answers the needs of the people and to deal with Covid. “We can’t address that for them,” he added.
Over the weekend, thousands of people in Shanghai, China’s biggest city and financial centre, began publicly protesting against the government’s strict Covid-19 measures and denouncing the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian rule, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).
The crackdown on protesters and the brief detention of BBC reporter has also impacted adversely the relations between UK-China ties.
