After four months in police custody, a young Chinese woman and several of her friends have been released following their attendance at a peaceful protest against Covid-19 restrictions in Beijing last year. Cao Zhixin, a 26-year-old editor at a publishing house, was one of eight people detained by authorities after attending a vigil to commemorate losses they attributed to China’s now-scrapped zero-Covid policy. The women were young, female professionals in the same extended social circle, and their detentions garnered global attention as a symbol of the ever-narrowing space for public expression of dissent in China under leader Xi Jinping.
Cao was released alongside three of her friends who were detained around the same time in December. It is not yet clear whether they still face any charges. The circumstances of their release are also unclear. Police in Beijing’s Chaoyang district, believed to be handling the cases, hung up when contacted for comment.
The November 27 event attended by the young women was one of many sweeping through Chinese cities at that time, as young people held vigils and demonstrations, many spurred to the streets in sadness and anger over the heavy human cost of three years of the Chinese government’s draconian zero-Covid policy. Following the protests, the Chinese government scrapped its zero-Covid policy in an abrupt about-face that also came in the face of steep economic challenges. However, authorities unleashed a security crackdown against what had been the largest showing of public discontent since the 1989 pro-democracy student protests in Tiananmen Square. In Beijing, authorities tracked people suspected of demonstrating, interrogating and detaining some – like Cao and her friends.
Of the eight initially detained, at least two, including Cao, were formally charged with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a loosely defined charge that carries a maximum sentence of up to five years. Two others in the group were released on bail in January, while two more were released in February. The overall number of people detained in connection with the protests within China’s notoriously opaque security and judicial systems also remains uncertain. The release of those in the Beijing group, whose circumstances are now known globally, is “welcome news,” according to human rights lawyer Teng Biao, but he added that they may only be a fraction of those arrested for participating in the protests across the country.