After two years of living under some of the world’s most restrictive COVID-19 policies, a growing number of Chinese residents appear to have finally had enough. Rumblings of frustration can now be heard from inside residents’ buildings, on the streets, in hospitals, and on school campuses, a rare show of defiance in a country known for its regime’s swift and heavy retaliation against even the faintest murmurs of dissent. “We can’t stand this anymore,” shouted a crowd of workers earlier this month in the locked-down Futian district in southern China’s Shenzhen, the country’s tech hub, as a dozen health workers stood on the other side of plastic barriers. “Lift the lockdown. We demand lifting the lockdown!” In another neighborhood in the city, fed-up residents banged on pots and pans for hours from their balconies after learning that their already two-week home confinement would continue. Elsewhere in the city, incensed locals …