On Saturday, Chinese officials announced that one of the country's longest lockdowns would finally end amid nationwide protests against Beijing's strict COVID-zero policies that seek to eliminate every case of the virus.
Residents in Xinjiang have been living under lockdown for over three months. Yet officials abruptly said that confinement would come to an end "in stages" after a deadly apartment fire in the provincial capital of Ürümqi sparked protests in Xinjiang and elsewhere in China, in the broadest expression of public frustration over the government's COVID-zero stance since the pandemic began.
