Of all the lines we’ve heard from the protesters, one doesn't articulate any political demand - but does carry a crucial message.

“I’m not foreign forces, I’m a Chinese citizen” - this sentence has appeared on some pictures circulating online, said to be taken from university campuses and graffiti in various cities.

The Chinese government often alleges that "foreign forces" are behind expressions of dissent. It has blamed “collusion with foreign forces” for protests in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Tibet and other regions in the past.

With the weekend’s protests gaining attention across the country and abroad, some internet users are alleging foreign involvement and others are pushing back.

"Is there foreign force? Maybe. But do you think foreign forces can organize activities across the country at such a large scale overnight, and give people money for holding white papers? I would say you underestimated our surveillance network," a Weibo post liked 28,000 times reads.

"Foreign forces won't be able to enter the country because their health code would be red," another post liked more than 4,000 times said.

Last week we reported how scenes of maskless fans enjoying the World Cup had stirred anger among some Chinese citizens who then questioned the need for zero-Covid restrictions.

That sparked furious discussion online - and authorities have responded.

China's Central Television (CCTV) is now editing out close-ups of spectators during games so local viewers don’t see thousands of fans without masks in the stands.

It's only showing wide-angle pictures of the crowds. There's also a half a minute delay in live broadcasts of games.

Zero-Covid China asks: Is World Cup on another planet?

Kevin Rudd, the former prime minister of Australia, says protests taking place across China are unusual and "potentially significant".

Speaking to the BBC's Today programme Rudd said that since 1989, when Beijing's Tiananmen Square became the focus for large-scale protests which were crushed by China's Communist rulers, protests have been rare.

There have been occasional protests over labour rights and land disputes, along with sporadic demonstrations over human rights that have been suppressed, he says.

"But this seems to be general, seems to be across multiple cities at once, it doesn’t seem to be centrally coordinated - it seems to be spontaneous," he says.

Rudd also points out that the current protests appear to be about more than just Covid measures.

"There is an argument that this is now a metaphor for a much border set of, shall we say, distrust on the parts of the Chinese people about different aspects about what Xi Jinping’s regime is doing.

"The key question is what does the regime do next."

Martin Yip
BBC Chinese, reporting from Hong Kong

Image source, Undergrad, HKUSU

There have been two very small events in Hong Kong to support the demonstrations in China.

Two mainland Chinese students held flowers and gave out leaflets at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). The leaflets asked others to express condolences to the victims of a fire in Urumqi, the western Chinese city that has been under Covid restrictions since August. Police took their details and then let them go.

Meanwhile about a dozen students gathered and lit candles at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST).

“Well done, classmates,” said Avery Ng, former chairman of the radical pro-democracy party, League of Social Democrats.

Comments on social media showed a mixed reaction - Hong Kong saw months of clashes between anti-government protesters and police in 2019 but Beijing has largely quelled the unrest by imposing a controversial national security law.

“Let mainlanders experience for themselves what it’s like when you can’t express yourselves freely,” said one user.

Under Hong Kong's Basic Law the territory enjoys rights including freedom of assembly and freedom of speech, which do not exist on the mainland. But Beijing's national security law has limited those rights.

Suranjana Tewari
Asia business correspondent

The cost of China’s zero-Covid policy is clear to see with these protests.

It’s giving rise to social distress, but economic pain is a major factor too.

The country was already facing an unprecedented unemployment crisis, especially amongst young people. Fears of lockdowns have made families and companies reluctant to spend. Growth has slowed as a result.

A property crisis and a crackdown on big tech are also weighing on the world’s second largest economy.

But it is the zero-Covid policy that has continually rattled markets and investors, even as the region and the rest of the world open up.

Lockdowns and mass testing in China's manufacturing hubs have hit production for global brands like Apple and Tesla.

And the lack of a mass vaccination strategy hasn’t filled investors with much hope that the situation will improve anytime soon.

This will likely have long term effects on China’s people, its development and its economy, and could in turn affect a global economy that is heavily reliant on the country.

• Protests against strict Covid measures in China have spread to the biggest cities with protests late into Sunday evening
• Apart from Shanghai and Beijing, demonstrations have also been seen - including at universities - in Nanjing, Chengdu, Wuhan and other places
• People have been criticising not only Covid restrictions but also President Xi Jinping. Police in Shanghai made a number of arrests
• On Monday there was a large police presence at the main Shanghai protest site - Wulumuqi Middle Road, where barriers have also been erected
• The Chinese government has not acknowledged the protests or responded in any formal way
• However news of the protests is spreading through Chinese social media despite heavy censorship
• On Monday China recorded 40,052 new Covid cases - a fifth straight daily record - up from 39,506 a day earlier

The deadly fire in Urumqi - a city on the western Xinjiang region that has been under Covid restrictions since August - was the trigger for the weekend's protests. Although state media has insisted people in the block of flats where the fire broke out were able to leave their apartments, many people believe Covid measures may have contributed to the deaths.

But anger at the consequences of zero-Covid had already been building for many months, following other deaths and incidences of suffering that people say could have been avoided:

• Earlier this month, a family in Zhengzhou said their baby died because her ambulance was delayed by Covid restrictions

• In September, Chengdu residents were barred from fleeing their homes during a 6.6 magnitude earthquake which killed 65 people
• Also that month in Guizhou, a bus ferrying residents to a mandatory quarantine centre crashed, killing 27 passengers
• In October, a 14-year-old girl in Henan forced into quarantine died after she developed a fever and couldn't get treatment in the centre, her father said
• During Shanghai's lockdown in April, people complained about the lack of food and difficult conditions faced by elderly people who were forcibly taken to quarantine centres

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has insisted zero-Covid is about saving lives and China has officially recorded just over 5,200 deaths from the virus - far fewer than in other countries.

Blank sheets of paper have become an iconic item during the protests, which many now refer to as “white paper revolution”, “blank sheet revolution” or “A4 revolution”.

During various demonstrations across the country, people were seen holding a blank sheet of paper. Some say it’s a way to avoid censorship.

In a viral video said to be from Saturday, a woman in the Communication University of Nanjing held a blank piece of paper before an unidentified man took it away.

In another video from later that night, dozens of more students were seen on the campus holding pieces of white paper, standing in silence. Similar scenes occurred in other major cities over the weekend.

“There was definitely nothing on the paper, but we know what’s on there,” a woman who participated a protests in Shanghai on Saturday night told the BBC.

Anger at zero-Covid policies is coming even as China is reporting record numbers of new cases.

On Monday the country's authorities said there were 40,052 new Covid cases - a fifth straight daily record - up from 39,506 a day earlier.

They include thousands of new cases in the major cities of Guangzhou and Chongqing.

At the main protest road in Shanghai, police are detaining anyone who walks by and takes photos.

They are forcing people to delete their photos or face arrest. At least two people have been detained so far.

As we reported earlier, blue barriers have been erected at Wulumuqi Middle Road. It's pretty quiet at the moment but there is a heavy police presence.

State media - a mouthpiece for the ruling Chinese Communist Party - has no mention of the protests.

However, the English-language edition of the Global Times has published an article taking aim at Western media for allegedly fanning discontent around China's zero-Covid policy.

Quoting an academic at Fudan University, it writes: "Due to ideological differences, it has become almost an instinct of Western countries and media to criticize communist governments with an aim to subvert the latter with color revolutions".

But in what some may interpret as an indirect response to the protests, it also writes that the country's Covid measures "are never static" and "are under constant adjustment".

Xinhua news agency also emphasizes the need to prioritise the welfare of the people when implementing Covid policies, while the China Daily says local administrations are being urged to "rectify Covid control malpractices".

As well as in London (as we reported earlier), protests appear to have taken place in Paris, Amsterdam, Dublin, Toronto and some cities in the US.

The BBC is unable to independently verify the photos posted online, but they appear to show a group of protesters standing outside the Pompidou Centre in Paris.

Some held a copy of the Wulumuqi Middle Road street sign. The road in Shanghai is named after the city of Urumqi, in western China's Xinjiang region, where a fire in a block of flats killed 10 people last week. Urumqi has been under Covid restrictions since August.

In Amsterdam many held up white pieces of paper - an acknowledgement of censorship in China.

In Dublin, photos posted online showed a group of protesters lighting candles and laying flowers on a monument in the city. Similar scenes were also pictured in San Francisco and Toronto, as well as the University of Sheffield in the UK.

Image source, Reuters

Blue barriers have been put up on the road in Shanghai on Monday morning - the site that saw large protests over the weekend.

As we've been reporting, hundreds gathered, holding up blank sheets of paper in silent protest, while others publicly called for Chinese leader Xi Jinping to resign.

But this morning the street appears to have gone quiet, with pictures showing normal traffic activity and little else - the large blue barriers being the only reminder of the weekends' events.

Image source, Reuters

Monica Miller
Asia Business Reporter

Image source, Getty Images

Angry protests across China have compounded the financial sector's fears of rising Covid cases and the continuation of Beijing's strict "zero-Covid" policy.

Stocks: Hong Kong's Hang Seng shed 4% as markets opened on Monday. China's CSI 300 index is down more than 2%. Stocks in Australia, South Korea and Japan were also experiencing losses.

Oil: Oil suffered its lowest level of the year. Benchmark brent crude is down 2% at $81.70 per barrel. West Texas Intermediate was down 2.5% at $74.36 per barrel.

Futures: The Nasdaq and S&P 500 futures were also down, a hint that US markets could follow Asia's lead later in the trading day.

Currency: China's onshore yuan weakens to 7.23 against the US dollar in early trading, the weakest level since 10 November.

As we've reported, China is seeing record case numbers at the moment, and many analysts are concerned about China's shrinking economy.

China's National Bureau of Statistics reported profits fell 3.0% in the first 10 months of 2022 compared to the previous year.

A protest poster showing a Friedmann equation was purportedly held up by students in Beijing's prestigious Tsinghua University - a play on the word "Friedmann", which sounds similar to "free 的 man" - quite literally translated to "a man who is free".

Friedmann is a Russian physicist and mathematician best-known for his work on the theory of relativity and for introducing the possibility of an expanding universe - a concept that may not have been lost on the protesting students.

The BBC could not trace the origins of this photo, but it has been shared widely on social media - even by high profile Hong Kong protest leader and ex-lawmaker Nathan Law, who has since fled the city for the UK.

Anger among Chinese people isn't new - it's been bubbling away for some time now.

Just last week, protests erupted at the world's biggest iPhone factory in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou, with footage showing hundreds of workers marching and being confronted by riot police.

Those livestreaming the protests said workers were beaten by police. Footage showed workers shouting: "Defend our rights! Defend our rights!"

In late October, rising Covid cases saw the site locked down, prompting some workers to break out and go home. The company then recruited new workers with the promise of generous bonuses.

However, employees told the BBC their employees - manufacturer Foxconn - had "changed the contract they promised".

That, coupled with discontent over strict Covid measures, led to scenes like those in the video above.

The country's top leadership may not have realised quite how unhappy people are about the ongoing Covid restrictions because of how severely media and freedom of speech has been restricted, Rana Mitter, the director of the China Centre at the UK's Oxford University has suggested.

In an interview with the BBC, he said there "may be an argument that either people in [these] levels haven't realised quite how unhappy people are or can't work out what is the best way to actually get out of them, in terms of having to open up or use a different vaccine strategy".

He added that another issue China faces is that there is no "obvious endpoint" at which restrictions would be lifted and life would go back to normal - with one reason being its failure to import or approve an mRNA vaccine - as has been used by most Western countries.

Image source, Reuters

In Beijing, protesters have reacted to police demands in a different way.

They've acquiesced to a request for them to stop chanting "no more lockdowns" - and instead have taken to sarcastically demanding that they "want more lockdowns" and "Covid tests".

Image source, Reuters

Yanzhong Huang, a Chinese health policy expert based at US think tank, The Council on Foreign Relations, says the protests in China represent a "tipping point" for Covid-related dissent in the country.

Speaking to the BBC, Huang says that though there is no indication the Chinese government is ready to give up its zero-Covid strategy, there have already been some loosening of Covid restrictions in Urumqi, where protests took place on Friday.

But Huang says that even if local governments decide to change course on the policy in response to protests elsewhere, it will still have to address the rapid surge in Covid cases nationwide.

More from Shanghai now, where thousands protested against strict Covid measures over the weekend - with some even calling on President Xi Jinping to step down.

One observer of the protest there is Frank Tsai, who organises public lectures in China. He told the BBC he was surprised at how large the protest had become.

"I haven't seen any protests of this scale in Shanghai in the entire 15 years that I have lived here," he said.

Over the past two or three decades, he said, there have been tens of thousands of small-scale protests about things including labour rights and land grabs.

But, he says, "very, very few" have targeted the central government, and "basically nothing" has targeted the regime itself before.