Chinese Public Sets Off Fireworks to Celebrate New Year, Despite Government Ban

(Minghui.org) On the last day of 2022 and first day of 2023, the Chinese public set off fireworks around the country to celebrate the New Year and express their anger over the strict COVID lockdown policies in the past three years, despite the nationwide fireworks ban since 2019.

One government official said, “We dare not intervene. The public has woken up. There is no way for us to stop them. There are so many of them. With the high death toll from the pandemic, the public no longer believes in the government or so-called experts.”

Setting off fireworks has long been an important tradition for celebration in China. But the Chinese communist regime issued a fireworks ban in 2019, and since then very few people have dared to set off fireworks during the Lunar New Year, and some who did were detained and fined.

With the recent “white paper” movement and other protests over the strict COVID lockdown that fundamentally threatened people’s basic livelihoods, a tipping point has been reached such that the Chinese public are no longer afraid of the regime, and are stepping forward to protest.

One police officer joked that the government banned fireworks because they worried that the fireworks may scare former Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin to death. He is now dead and the ban is still in place. The officer said maybe the surge of COVID cases is caused by the fireworks ban, as fireworks are believed to have the power to drive away evil spirits and bad luck.