Dhe most discussed topic on the Chinese internet on Friday was a deadly high-rise fire in Xinjiang, which would have received far less attention under different circumstances. Ten people died and nine others were injured after a fire broke out in a 15th-floor apartment. According to official information, the fire was caused by defective electronics.
Speculations as to whether rescue work has been delayed
According to the fire brigade in the provincial capital of Urumchi, it took three hours to extinguish the fire. Residents’ speculation that rescue work had been delayed by cordons set up in connection with the corona policy provoked angry reactions. There is no evidence for this. Posts on the topic have been viewed more than 1.1 billion times on the Weibo network. The state media emphasized that the residents of the high-rise were not prevented from escaping into the open by corona measures.
The angry statements on the Internet show that fire safety remains a highly sensitive issue under the conditions of the zero Covid measures. Locked off emergency exits are currently an everyday phenomenon in public buildings. In order to limit and control mobility, only one exit is often kept open in office buildings and shopping malls. Even in residential buildings that are sealed off due to Corona cases, doors are often locked.
On Friday, many netizens posted photos of bolt cutters they had bought so they could pick padlocks in an emergency. The reactions to the fire in Urumqi also show that many residents, especially in Xinjiang, are on edge after large parts of the province have been in permanent lockdown for three months. The former editor-in-chief of the party newspaper “Global Times”, Hu Xijin, wrote that the corona measures in Xinjiang were “obviously unreasonable” and had “exceeded the limits of people’s physical and mental endurance”.
