Scores of workers have clashed with police at a COVID test kit factory in China, video spreading on social media showed yesterday, as the country navigates a path out of its “zero COVID-19” policy.
Footage geolocated to an industrial park in the southwestern city of Chongqing showed people tossing crates at a group of uniformed men, sending a shower of what appear to be test kits flying.
Another clip showed a crowd in front of a line of police officers at night as loudspeakers play a warning demanding they “cease illegal activities.”
Photo: Reuters
A man who posted video from the scene said in an accompanying caption that many workers had not been paid.
Other posts alleged that Chongqing-based pharmaceutical company Zybio Inc (中元匯吉) suddenly fired workers who had only been recruited weeks earlier.
Zybio did not immediately respond to requests for comment, while the local police department declined to comment.
“All the workers’ demands are economic in nature,” said a man in one video who called himself a “Marxist-Leninist-Maoist.”
He said there was no political motive behind the protest.
Agence France-Presse could not confirm exactly when the videos were captured, although multiple social media users said the clash took place on Saturday night into yesterday morning.
Distinctly patterned brown-and-white industrial buildings can be seen in the background of the videos, matching previous images of Zybio’s facility in the Dadukou District Jianqiao Industrial Park.
The hashtag “Chongqing Dadukou Pharmaceutical Factory” appeared to be censored on Sina Weibo yesterday, with only one post from the previous day still visible describing the protest as an “interesting topic.”
One video posted on a TikTok account belonging to a state-owned news company showed what it claimed was a street littered with antigen tests in a Chongqing industrial park.
“Sources say a labor dispute triggered conflict,” the caption read.
The video was taken down within hours.
Protests centered on labor issues and targeting individual companies occur frequently in China, despite official efforts to clamp down on unrest.
COVID-19 case numbers are presumed to have soared across the country, as the Chinese government moves away from its zero-tolerance approach to the virus, after strict COVID-19 curbs in November last year sparked some of the country’s worst unrest in years.
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