What follows is one Beijing resident’s record of the three years the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) spent locking down, surveilling, and terrorizing its own population in the name of “zero COVID.” It is a story of sealed apartment gates, children dragged away in the night, a bribery market for avoiding forced quarantine, and a protest movement that finally forced the regime to reverse course, only for the government to abandon its citizens to a catastrophic uncontrolled outbreak with no medicine, no plan, and no accountability.
April 30, 2022: the gates close
I still remember the evening of April 28, 2022. The company sent a message: work from home starting tomorrow. Something about a new COVID risk in Dongcheng District. Nobody worried much. Beijing had been through several rounds of restrictions before. They usually lasted a few days. This time was different.
On the morning of April 30, I walked to the front gate of my apartment compound to buy breakfast and found it sealed with metal barriers. Two security guards stood at the entrance. People could enter. No one could leave. Community workers had posted a notice: a positive-linked case had been identified, and the compound was under “temporary closed management.” No end date.
The WeChat group exploded. People asked whether they could go to work, whether they could visit the hospital. The building manager repeated the same line: “Wait for unified arrangements.” That day, Beijing went silent.
May 3: food runs out
By the third day of lockdown, food deliveries stopped entering the compound. All supplies were deposited at the gate and distributed in batches by volunteers. At eight that evening, I tried to order groceries on my phone. I failed more than a dozen times in a row. Neighbors began posting for help in the group chat.
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One said the family had nothing left except instant noodles. An elderly resident living alone, unable to use a smartphone, went door to door asking to borrow food. That was the moment I understood: the Communist Party simply does not treat ordinary people as human beings.
May 15, 1:00 AM: the neighbors disappear
The night that truly frightened me was May 15.
Sometime after one in the morning, noises outside my door woke me up. Through the peephole, I could see figures in hazmat suits and police officers. They were knocking on my neighbor’s door. Workers told the couple next door they had been classified as “close contacts” and had to be transferred to centralized quarantine immediately. The husband and wife kept asking where they were being taken and when they could come back. No one answered. The only response was: “Obey the arrangements.” Their child was crying the entire time.
About ten minutes later, all three were forced out with their luggage and loaded onto a bus. The next day, the WeChat group received a directive: do not discuss the transfers, do not post about them online, or face consequences. That night, for the first time, I was genuinely afraid. It reminded me of Red Guard raids during the Cultural Revolution. I later learned that some residents paid the neighborhood committee’s director 5,000 yuan per household, funneled through a security guard, to keep their names off the forced quarantine list.
June 6: release, into a changed city
On the afternoon of June 6, the compound lockdown was finally lifted. Many people stood at the gate and stared, as if they had forgotten where to go. I walked along the streets for a long time, just because I had not been allowed outside for so long. The city felt different. Everyone was angry.
October 13: the Sitong Bridge banner
On the afternoon of Oct. 13, a screenshot arrived via X (formerly Twitter): someone had hung a banner on Sitong Bridge in Beijing. People began sharing it privately on WeChat.
“We don’t want PCR tests, we want food. We don’t want lockdowns, we want freedom. We don’t want lies, we want dignity. We don’t want the Cultural Revolution, we want reform. We don’t want a supreme leader, we want ballots. We won’t be slaves, we’ll be citizens.” The words spoke for millions. The protester vanished, as if erased from existence. Afterward, Beijing acquired a new occupation: “bridge guards,” stationed on overpasses during sensitive dates to prevent anyone from posting anti-regime slogans.
November 27: The White Paper Protests
On the evening of Nov. 27, I saw online that people were gathering at Liangma Bridge. A friend sent photos from the scene: young people standing on the roadside holding blank sheets of white paper. No chanting. Just silence. The silence was more powerful than any slogan. I did not go, but I barely slept that night. WeChat videos were being deleted as fast as they appeared, and the speed of censorship made one thing clear: the pressure could no longer be contained. I admired the courage of everyone who showed up.
December: the regime panics and abandons its people
After Dec. 7, the government reversed course overnight. PCR testing stations were dismantled within three days. I believe the White Paper movement, spreading across the country, terrified the regime into dropping all restrictions without preparation or plan.
Within a week, colleagues at my office were falling sick one after another. On Dec. 18, my fever hit 39°C. I went to pharmacy after pharmacy. None had fever-reducing medicine. The hospital’s fever clinic had a six-hour wait. Neighbors started sharing pills in the group chat. Two ibuprofen tablets became a lifesaving commodity. The government did nothing. It left people to fend for themselves, offered no medicine, and allowed prices to spike to five or ten times normal levels. How many elderly people did not survive that winter?
The lesson
After living through the pandemic and everything that followed, I see the truth with absolute clarity. Under Communist Party rule, a system without checks on power and without public oversight cannot correct its own mistakes. When major decisions rest with a handful of people, or with Xi Jinping alone, one man holding the fate of 1.4 billion people, tragedies like the Cultural Revolution, the Tiananmen massacre, and the COVID catastrophe will keep repeating.
I call for the overthrow of the Chinese Communist Party’s dictatorship. Without the Communist Party, there can be a new China. Rebuilding a free and democratic system is the Chinese people’s mission.
