China claims that coronavirus cases are a thing of the past; there are no new cases; and, as Reuters touted the other day, the country has now begun its "return to normal."

Here's normal:

A huge protest march swept out of China's Hubei province on Friday, with thousands of angry residents pouring across a bridge into neighboring Jiangxi province and clashing with police.

The capital city of Hubei province is Wuhan, ground zero for the coronavirus pandemic.

That's part of a comprehensive report from Breitbart describing the explosive state of unrest in China's big central province, based on Chinese citizen-journalist reports and sources watching closely such as Radio Liberty and Canada's Globe & Mail.

Here's just one example:

Footage from Hubei, #China appears to show residents attacking officers and police vehicles on a bridge as they attempt to access neighbouring Jiangxi province. The unrest follows weeks of #coronavirus lockdown in Hubei. pic.twitter.com/VpROreqzy6

— Hong Kong Free Press (@HongKongFP) March 27, 2020

Obviously, the locals are picking up where they've left off now that all's "normal," which, more to the point, means reckoning time.

Three things seem to be immediately fueling these protests:

One, the people are furious at the cops for treating them like cattle and hurling people, literally kicking and screaming, into pestilence pens, places where, if they didn't have COVID-19 going in, they sure as heck would have after coming out.  Remember these images?

Two, the Wuhan people aren't being allowed to return to normal because everyone else still treats them like walking disease vectors.  Why's that?  Because nobody believes China's government when it says the crisis is over.  That lack of credibility has big consequences for Wuhan people whether the Chicom government is lying or not.  They are paying that price.

Three, the cops seem to be willing to fight each other in different provinces, and the migrant workers seem to be willing to fight, too, regardless of the issue.  That's the sign of a dry tinder regime under stress.

Combine this with the longer-term problems, such as a lousy economy, described here, with GDP going down by at least half, and people have got to be wondering what they need this government for.  There already is a strong (and unprecedented) public willingness to blame China's leader, Xi Jinping.

Here's one last thing: the Chicoms know there's a problem, and things are worse internally for them than they look.  That would explain their initial cover-up efforts and denial of any problem, allowing five million people out of the city at the lunar new year, to spread the disease through the country, as well as permitting citizen to travel to Italy, for example, where the consequences were particularly lethal.

Two things now suggest they knew that a reckoning was in the cards for them:

One, they shut the borders, speaking of fears of a secondary infection, which is pretty speculative, and if it's a real risk, it is just as likely to come from the inside, given the virus's origins in China.

Two, and even bigger, they expelled U.S. journalists, kicking out the knowledgeable foreign correspondents of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other reporting outfits, and there aren't many, to make sure there wouldn't be any unpleasant reporting.  They even kicked them out of Hong Kong, knowing that that city is a tinderbox, too, and a tinderbox that can spread to Guangdong, China's largest province, which could get uncontrollable and endanger their regime, which is right about the 75-year mark when most intolerable regimes collapse.

These instant riots not more than a couple days after declaring all's normal are not a good sign.  Normal people in a normal regime would be breathing a sigh of relief, but China's is not a normal regime.

Update: According to this report, China has seized at least one American-owned factory producing face masks and at least one ship carrying masks, gloves, and other protective gear to the USA to turn around and return to China. (Hat tip: Roger Luchs.)

Image credit: Twitter screen shot.