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Growing Defiance of COVID Curbs in China Brings Wave of Arrests

Commuters wearing face masks ride an escalator at a subway station in Beijing, Friday, April 15, 2022. (AP)
Commuters wearing face masks ride an escalator at a subway station in Beijing, Friday, April 15, 2022. (AP)
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Growing Defiance of COVID Curbs in China Brings Wave of Arrests

Commuters wearing face masks ride an escalator at a subway station in Beijing, Friday, April 15, 2022. (AP)
Commuters wearing face masks ride an escalator at a subway station in Beijing, Friday, April 15, 2022. (AP)

Sun Jian, a 37-year-old master's degree student in the Chinese city of Yantai, for months staged a solo campaign against his university's COVID-19 prevention measures, including blistering criticism on social media.

The last straw for authorities came on March 27, when Sun walked around his campus carrying a placard that read "lift the lockdown on Ludong".

Police detained him and on April 1 Ludong University expelled him, according to a letter from the university seen by Reuters.

University officials did not respond to a request for comment.

The Chinese public have been largely supportive of the zero-COVID policy that kept the coronavirus at bay for the two years after it emerged in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019 and spread rapidly around the world.

But the support seems to be wearing thin as the highly contagious Omicron variant emerges in China, triggering curbs that have brought food shortages, family separations, lost wages and economic pain.

Sun's protest reflects growing frustration and resentment, in a society that generally respects authority, with a COVID strategy that is increasingly challenged by the Omicron variant.

In some cases the push-back has gone viral on social media, with video clips of citizens scuffling with health workers and screaming anger over lockdowns from the windows of their apartments.

Space for dissent has narrowed as China has grown more authoritarian under President Xi Jinping, and the anger over COVID restrictions has created headaches for authorities who have urged the public to make sacrifices for the greater good.

Sun said his university had moved classes online and banned students from leaving campus, receiving packages or getting outside food deliveries.

He dismissed the curbs as unnecessary given what he said was the low death rates associated with the Omicron variant.

"The trouble brought by the virus can't be compared with the disruption from some of the anti-COVID measures taken by our school," Sun told Reuters by telephone.

He said his social media accounts had been blocked.

'Venting off'
Arrests and detentions for COVID-related rule-breaking surged in March, according to the results of a search on the Weibo social media platform for police statements, posts by state agencies and state media reports from around China.

The search found 59 confirmed police cases and 26 arrests for COVID rule-breaking in January, and fewer in February. But in March, more than 600 police cases and 150 confirmed arrests were reported on Weibo, the review by Reuters found.

It is likely that the figures represent only a fraction of actual cases as not every incident makes it to social media or is reported by the authorities.

Public security departments also announced a surge in crackdowns on COVID rule violations in March, with cities and counties publishing 80 notices on their Weibo accounts, compared with seven in January and 10 in February.

Most infractions involve citizens trying to skirt rules such as reporting travels on a health app, falsifying COVID test results, and sneaking out of locked-down neighborhoods.

Assaults on health workers also surged.

Police also reported arrests of citizens who were "venting off dissatisfaction” and using "inappropriate language” related to the pandemic.

As the resentment simmers, authorities are trying to control the public message, often with censorship of online complaints.

On April 5, videos of a protest against lockdowns in Langfang, a city near Beijing, were quickly removed from Weibo.

Last week, Shanghai announced a crackdown on "rumors", threatening to shut down offending social media chat groups.

But pushback from the public can yield results.

Last month, students at Sichuan University in the city of Chengdu forced university authorities to lift a campus lockdown after protesting, the South China Morning Post reported.

State media warnings have at times added fuel to the fire.

Thousands of social media posts used a Weibo hashtag for a report by the official Xinhua news agency about police cracking down on COVID-related misinformation to post criticism of the government's coronavirus response.

By Friday, it had racked-up over half a billion views.

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Features

Lebanon’s South Takes a Breath as Families Return to Shattered Homes and Lives

This picture shows the destruction in the southern Lebanese village of Froun on June 30, 2026. (AFP)
This picture shows the destruction in the southern Lebanese village of Froun on June 30, 2026. (AFP)
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Lebanon’s South Takes a Breath as Families Return to Shattered Homes and Lives

This picture shows the destruction in the southern Lebanese village of Froun on June 30, 2026. (AFP)
This picture shows the destruction in the southern Lebanese village of Froun on June 30, 2026. (AFP)

On a beachfront in the coastal city of Tyre, war has finally abated just enough for children to play in the waves and families to gather under parasols as life slowly returns to southern Lebanon. But away from the shore, people coming home after months of exile are having to adapt to harsh new realities: the threat of conflict between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah flaring up again and the challenge of rebuilding from the destruction Israeli bombs have wreaked on their hometowns.

"People are coming back to Tyre to rebuild, to work — all the restaurants are open again," said local resident Ali Skaiky, wet from a swim in the sea and holding a rubber lilo.

"We still hear strikes and fighting at night, but it's far away. There's destruction beyond imagination, but we hope everything will stay calm."

Skaiky is among some 400,000 people who have returned to southern Lebanon in the weeks since a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. The truce has not halted fighting, but it has lowered the ‌intensity.

Returnees are cleaning ‌debris from damaged homes, reopening businesses and trying to rebuild the routines the war ‌shattered. Yet ⁠for many, normality ⁠now means keeping a suitcase packed, following the news obsessively and never straying too far from home.

For Fadlallah Qassim, 42, returning home meant confronting the destruction the war had left behind, including a hit on his house.

"We returned to find the whole house caved in with rubble, and all the furniture ruined," he said. "I cleaned up, fixed it, and brought some basic things for the house, now my wife, children and I all live in one room."

In the nearby village of Srifa, where entire neighborhoods were damaged, Suzan Fakih, 55, said the hardest part of returning was realizing home no longer felt like home.

"The moment you arrive, it doesn't ⁠feel like your village anymore," she said. "Everything is black and grey. It hurts your soul. ‌You look around and think, 'This can't be the village I've lived in all ‌my life.'"

'YOU PACK YOUR BAGS AND RUN'

Srifa lies in the deep south of Lebanon, close to where Israeli troops occupy a strip ‌of territory and launch regular attacks on what the Israeli army says are Hezbollah targets. In areas nearby, Israel has ‌demolished almost entire villages.

Fakih said people remain haunted by the possibility they could be forced to flee again.

"I can't remember a time in my life when I wasn't living with a bag packed, ready to leave. A few quiet years pass, then you pack your bags and run again," she said.

The ongoing hostilities and levels of destruction have left 600,000 more people internally displaced, according to Lebanon's social ‌affairs ministry. Many families whose homes were destroyed are still living in schools or in the rented homes they fled to during the conflict.

Lebanon has suffered the deadliest spillover ⁠of the regional war triggered ⁠by the US-Israeli strikes on Iran in February.

The conflict spread to Lebanon on March 2, when Hezbollah fired on Israel in support of Tehran, triggering an Israeli air and ground campaign. More than 4,300 people have been killed in Lebanon, according to the country's health ministry.

RENTING BACKUP HOMES

Some 20 miles (32 km) farther north, Mohammad Sweid and other residents who recently returned to the Bekaa Valley town of Sohmor, said they live with the same uncertainty.

Sweid still pays rent for the house he and his family fled to during the war, keeping it as a backup home if they need to leave again.

"If something happens again, we may not find another place," the 31-year-old manual worker said.

In the Lebanese capital Beirut, whose Hezbollah-controlled southern suburb of Dahiyeh has been battered by Israel at intervals over the last two years for being home to Hezbollah's leadership, residents are also cautiously trying to rebuild their lives.

Moussa Ghamloush, 68, has been repairing his bomb-damaged home and reopening his restaurant, which was completely destroyed in a separate strike, but says his permanent home will always be Dahieh.

"We're not the kind of people who leave. Our roots are here. We stayed, and if there's a third war, we'll stay again."

Features

Trump Won Big Spending Promises from NATO Last Year. This Week in Türkiye, He'll Try to Enforce Them

US President Donald Trump speaks during the Salute to America 250 celebration on the National Mall in Washington, DC, USA, 04 July 2026. EPA/JIM LO SCALZO / POOL
US President Donald Trump speaks during the Salute to America 250 celebration on the National Mall in Washington, DC, USA, 04 July 2026. EPA/JIM LO SCALZO / POOL
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Trump Won Big Spending Promises from NATO Last Year. This Week in Türkiye, He'll Try to Enforce Them

US President Donald Trump speaks during the Salute to America 250 celebration on the National Mall in Washington, DC, USA, 04 July 2026. EPA/JIM LO SCALZO / POOL
US President Donald Trump speaks during the Salute to America 250 celebration on the National Mall in Washington, DC, USA, 04 July 2026. EPA/JIM LO SCALZO / POOL

President Donald Trump got what he wanted from NATO at last year’s summit: an alliance whose members had largely acceded to his demands to step up their defense spending.

This week when he meets leaders in Türkiye, his mission is to enforce that pledge, The Associated Press said.

The speed with which most NATO countries have tried to heed Trump’s call to spend 5% of their annual gross domestic product on defense over the next decade underscores how the US president has reshaped the alliance and bent it to his will — even as he continues to spar with its members over the Iran war, his flirtation with annexing Greenland, and various personal tiffs.

“President Trump fully expects that all allies will step up immediately and get on the path to 5% and do it with urgency,” Matt Whitaker, the US ambassador to NATO, told reporters in a preview of the administration’s message before this week’s summit in Ankara.

Trump leaves Monday evening for the summit, and for days leading up to the trip has been airing grievances about how much the US spends on defense compared with other countries. That’s despite efforts from Mark Rutte, the alliance’s secretary-general, who tried to feed the ego of the tempestuous US leader in an Oval Office meeting last month. There, he displayed large charts on easels showing what he called “ The Trump Trillion ” — how much allies had boosted their spending commitments since 2017.

Luke Coffey, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think thank in Washington, described the Ankara gathering as the “first report card” after last year’s summit in The Hague.

“If NATO members play their cards right — if the leaders show up demonstrating a commitment and a reasonable plan to meet these spending targets — then it’ll allow President Trump to take a victory lap,” Coffey said.

Trump will meet with Ukraine's Zelenskyy Trump left last month’s G7 summit in France buoyed by support from his counterparts for his interim agreement to end the war with Iran. He praised unity among leaders — who also worked to bring Trump onside to boost security assistance for Ukraine in its fight with Russia.

That war, now in its fifth year, is expected to be a key focus at the Ankara summit. The White House said Trump will meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday. Trump spoke with both Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 4.

Trump also plans to meet on the sidelines of the summit with Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa. The White House has not provided goals for that discussion, but it comes as Trump has publicly mused about Syria playing a bigger role fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon. Al-Sharaa has said he has no interest in doing so.

The US president also plans a separate meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the host of the summit whom Trump counts as a close friend.

But he has no bilateral meetings planned with other leaders. Despite the positive tone of the G7 summit, Trump resurrected feuds as soon as he returned stateside.

He proclaimed that Keir Starmer would resign as British prime minister before the embattled leader made it official, arguing that Starmer “failed badly” on immigration and energy. Meanwhile, Trump asserted that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni had begged him for a photo, prompting a ferocious denial by her and the cancellation of a US visit by the country’s foreign minister.

Despite the fallout, Trump egged it on further on Sunday when he posted a photo on social media of Meloni smiling at him, along with the words “RESTRAINING ORDER NEEDED.”

Trump has remained on tense terms with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, and while French President Emmanuel Macron charmed Trump with a lavish dinner at the Palace of Versailles last month, it hasn’t always been smooth between the two leaders.

Aware of those tensions, a bipartisan group of senators is again headed to the summit this year, trying to represent the broad support for the alliance on Capitol Hill and to serve as a counterweight to Trump’s often caustic attitude toward NATO.

“They are our best allies, they are our best trading partners, they are critical to our national security, to our economic success, and we need to encourage those relationships,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., who is leading the delegation to Ankara. “That’s part of what Congress understands that the administration doesn’t seem to.”

Trump’s team is making the case for more NATO changes

The summit comes as Trump’s administration makes the case for what it calls “NATO 3.0,” which envisions an alliance that has Europe taking on more of its security needs, allowing the US to shift its focus elsewhere.

The strategy was outlined by Elbridge Colby, a US undersecretary of defense, earlier this year at a gathering of NATO defense ministers.

Then, in a scathing speech to other NATO defense ministers last month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth added to the pressure by announcing that the US will conduct a six-month review of its forces in Europe. This surprised countries in the alliance that had anticipated coordinating with the Trump administration through the transition.

Trump himself sparked much confusion earlier this year when he seemed to send conflicting signals on the issue, announcing that he would send 5,000 US troops to Poland weeks after ordering the same number of forces pulled out of the continent.

Shaheen said the NATO 3.0 concept “fails to understand -- as this administration has consistently failed to understand -- the threat that Putin and Russia are to Europe and subsequently to the United States.”

Europe is boosting spending, but still counts on the US

The US president last year was the driving factor in a broad target reached in The Hague for NATO countries to spend 5% of their GDP on defense over the next decade.

Of that, 3.5% would be for core defense spending and the rest would be related expenses, such as infrastructure. Spain said at the time that it couldn’t meet those levels, and some others have voiced reservations about the ambitious goal.

Despite the increased pledges and spending, experts say many parts of the continent are nonetheless reliant on the US for their defense should they come under attack. The defining feature of the NATO alliance is the view that an armed attack on one member is an attack on all.

“This is the reality for most Europeans,” said Liana Fix, senior fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations. She said most are far from being able to defend themselves without the United States, “even if they’re starting to develop all that.”

Apart from the spending pledge, NATO has worked to accommodate Trump in other ways.

The alliance earlier this year introduced “Arctic Sentry,” a NATO-led military exercise aimed at countering Russian and Chinese activities in the region. It’s also meant to address Trump’s repeated threats to seize Greenland, since the Republican president has insisted the US needs to acquire the semiautonomous territory of Denmark for strategic security reasons.

Features

Syrian FM’s Visit Lays Groundwork for Strategic Partnership with Lebanon

This handout photograph released by the Lebanese Government Press Office shows Lebanon's Prime Minister Nawaf Salam (R) meeting with Syria's Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani at the governmental palace in Beirut on July 2, 2026. (Lebanese Government Press Office / AFP)
This handout photograph released by the Lebanese Government Press Office shows Lebanon's Prime Minister Nawaf Salam (R) meeting with Syria's Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani at the governmental palace in Beirut on July 2, 2026. (Lebanese Government Press Office / AFP)
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Syrian FM’s Visit Lays Groundwork for Strategic Partnership with Lebanon

This handout photograph released by the Lebanese Government Press Office shows Lebanon's Prime Minister Nawaf Salam (R) meeting with Syria's Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani at the governmental palace in Beirut on July 2, 2026. (Lebanese Government Press Office / AFP)
This handout photograph released by the Lebanese Government Press Office shows Lebanon's Prime Minister Nawaf Salam (R) meeting with Syria's Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani at the governmental palace in Beirut on July 2, 2026. (Lebanese Government Press Office / AFP)

Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani‘s visit to Beirut was more than a diplomatic stop. Coming amid sweeping regional changes, particularly in Lebanon, it signaled that Syria’s new leadership is seeking to rebuild relations with its neighbor on fundamentally different terms from those that defined more than four decades of Syrian tutelage.

Al-Shaibani’s meetings extended beyond Lebanon’s three top officials — President Joseph Aoun, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam — to include religious leaders, politicians and party chiefs.

Head of the Saydet El Jabal Gathering former MP Fares Souaid said the timing of the visit was closely tied to regional and international developments.

Speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat, he noted that it followed repeated remarks by US President Donald Trump, who said Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa would “deal with Hezbollah in Beirut.”

This has prompted Damascus to engage directly with developments in Lebanon, he added.

He further stressed that the visit conveyed reassuring messages to Lebanon’s various communities, particularly Christians and Shiites, that “the new Syria is completely different from Bashar al-Assad’s Syria” and has no intention of reviving the Assad-era policy of hegemony over Lebanon.

Souaid described the announcement of a Lebanese-Syrian Higher Committee as the true starting point for a new phase in bilateral relations.

The committee would establish the framework for future political, security and economic cooperation, turning the page on the past and building a partnership between two sovereign states bound by geography and shared interests rather than domination, he explained.

Syria's Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani waves as he is cheered by by the crowds upon his arrival to the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli on July 2, 2026. (AFP)

Toward balanced relations

The visit coincided with renewed US diplomatic activity and discussions about Lebanon’s future and regional influence, including Trump’s remarks suggesting a possible Syrian role in resolving Hezbollah’s weapons issue.

According to Lebanese sources familiar with the visit, Damascus sought to reassure all Lebanese powers that a new chapter had begun, one based on mutual respect for sovereignty, balanced relations and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs.

Al-Shaibani also drew attention after meeting Berri by saying he had no objection to speaking with Hezbollah “if necessary.”

Souaid said the remark reflected the new Syrian government’s openness toward all Lebanese factions, including the “Shiite duo” of Hezbollah and its ally the Amal movement, led by Berri.

The FM’s statement demonstrated that Damascus was not pursuing a policy of revenge against Hezbollah over its actions in Syria during the past decade, added Souaid.

Many Lebanese political forces believe the new Syrian approach reflects not only the outlook of Damascus’ new leadership, but also the aspirations of a broad segment of Lebanese across the political and sectarian spectrum for a normal relationship based on sovereignty and mutual respect.

MP Bilal al-Hashimi said al-Shaibani’s visit marked an important political milestone, reflecting a genuine desire among many Lebanese to close the chapter on the past and build relations founded on mutual respect, good neighborliness and the sovereignty of both states.

Al-Shaibani’s visit to Tripoli in northern Lebanon also drew considerable attention.

Souaid said the city had paid “a heavy price for supporting the Syrian uprising” against Assad and had also borne “significant political and economic costs during the influx of Syrian refugees”.

‘Long marginalized because of its Arab Sunni majority and its political opposition to the Assad family’s rule, Tripoli, viewed al-Shaibani’s visit as carrying important symbolic and political significance for the city and its residents,” he remarked.