A Chinese activist, who got out of jail in February after spending over three years in prison for criticizing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), recently issued a public petition demanding Beijing end its harsh “zero-COVID” policy. Ji Xiaolong, a resident in eastern Shanghai’s Pudong district, posted the petition on his social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Chinese media platform WeChat, and China’s Twitter-like Weibo on April 2. He also submitted the petition to Shanghai’s public security apparatus. In an interview with The Epoch Times on April 3, Ji spoke about why he decided to write the petition and what has happened since he made his demand public. “I was hesitant … I was only out of prison for over a month. I was afraid of going back to prison,” he said, knowing that Chinese authorities would be upset about the petition. In January 2019, Ji was sentenced to 3.5 years in …