Xi Jinping

Those calls were echoed in an open letter to the Chinese government by dozens of exiled Chinese dissidents including Wang Juntao in response to the protests, in which participants held up blank sheets of paper in a mute and ironic protest against authoritarian rule and lack of freedom of speech, the report said.

The violent protests mark some of the strongest dissent China has seen for over 30 years - but despite Beijing cracking down on protesters with ruthless violence, demonstrators are still defiantly turning out on the streets and fighting back against Xi's officials, Daily Mail reported.

A video shows a steady stream of tanks trundling through the eastern city of Xuzhou on Monday night, Daily Mail reported. The footage will rekindle memories of the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, when hundreds - if not thousands - of Chinese protesters were killed by soldiers in tanks, the report said.

A heavy police presence has been reported in several cities, and some gatherings were quelled or failed to materialise, reports the BBC. Reports have emerged of people being questioned and their phones searched. But overseas Chinese have continued protesting, in at least a dozen cities across the world. The weekend demonstrations, a rare sight in China, had grown after a fire in a high-rise block in Urumqi, western China, killed 10 people on November 24.

The wave of civil disobedience is unprecedented in mainland China in the past decade, as frustration mounts over Xi's signature zero-Covid policy nearly three years into the pandemic, the Guardian reported. Protests triggered by a deadly apartment fire in the far west of the country last week took place on Sunday in cities including Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Wuhan and Guangzhou.

Thousands of protesters turned out in Shanghai, where people were bundled into police cars, BBC reported. Students were also seen demonstrating at universities in Beijing and Nanjing, among other places. The latest unrest follows a protest in the remote north-west city of Urumqi, where lockdown rules were blamed after 10 people died in a tower block fire, BBC reported.

Thousands of people took to the streets of Shanghai to remember the victims and demonstrate against restrictions. Many were heard calling for President Xi Jinping to resign, BBC reported. The BBC has seen at least three people being bundled into police cars. The lockdown of blocks of flats has been blamed for deaths in the fire.

In a clip recorded by the media pool at the now-concluded G20 summit in Bali, a visibly frustrated Xi pulls the Canadian Prime Minister aside and says it was "not appropriate" for details about a previous conversation between the two leaders to have been shared with media, suggesting Trudeau lacked "sincerity" in his approach, the Guarian reported.

In a video uploaded on social media, both PM Modi and President Xi could be seen smiling and shaking hands and later the Prime Minister is also seen interacting with Blinken during the dinner. The Prime Minister is in Indonesia to attend the G20 summit, where earlier in the day, he called for creating a new world order during his address.

Biden and Xi held their first in-person meeting as Presidents on the sidelines of the G20 meetings in Bali, Indonesia. And it came at a time of a historic low in the relationship over China's position on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and a visit by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, which was cited by Beijing to shut down military-to-military and other lines of communication.