China’s hardline virus strategy is stoking public frustration, with many growing weary of snap lockdowns, lengthy quarantines and mass testing campaigns.

A deadly fire on Thursday in Urumqi, the capital of northwest China’s Xinjiang region, has become a fresh catalyst for public anger, with many blaming lengthy Covid lockdowns for hampering rescue efforts. Authorities deny the claims.

Hundreds rallied at Beijing’s elite Tsinghua University to protest against lockdowns on Sunday, one witness who wished to remain anonymous told AFP.

“At 11:30 am students started holding up signs at the entrance of the canteen, then more and more people joined. Now there are 200 to 300 people,” they said.

Participants sang the national anthem and “the Internationale” – a standard of the international communist movement – and chanted “freedom will prevail” and “no to lockdowns, we want freedom”, they said.

They described students holding up blank pieces of paper, a symbolic protest against censorship.

A video that appeared to be taken in the same location showed students shouting, “Democracy and the rule of law, freedom of expression”, and was quickly taken down.

Hundreds of people gathered in downtown Shanghai on Sunday afternoon to hold what appeared to be a silent protest near where a demonstration had erupted just hours earlier, an eyewitness told AFP.

Demonstrators holding blank pieces of paper and white flowers stood silently at several intersections, the person said under condition of anonymity.

Videos from the area spread on social media that appeared to be taken in the late afternoon showed a crowd chanting.

Footage from several different angles showed a man holding a bouquet of yellow flowers being dragged into a police car at one intersection as onlookers shouted.

Later in the evening, an AFP reporter saw a heavy security presence.

Dozens of policemen in yellow high-vis jackets formed a thick line, cordoning off the streets where the protests had taken place, while their colleagues asked people to leave the ar