Good morning. Welcome, Naxios today.

It's Monday, November 20th. I'm Nailiburu.

Today, what's next for student loan forgiveness?

Plus, early voting begins in Georgia's runoff Senate race.

But first, the moment of truth for China's zero COVID policy.

That's today's one big thing.

Protests are erupting across China as public outrage grows over new COVID lockdown restrictions.

Chinese protesters are asking the government to lift its zero COVID policy

and even calling for President Xi Jinping's resignation.

Naxios' Bethany Allen Ibrahimian has been covering this and joins us now from Taipei.

Good morning, Bethany.

Bethany, last week, a new surge of COVID infections in China prompted a return to lockdowns.

Now, this isn't the first time this has happened in the past three years.

So, what fueled these protests, which are pretty rare in China?

Well, it's been building.

The initial event that sparked these was that on Thursday in Xinjiang and in the far west,

there was a fire in an apartment building that was locked down.

And 10 people died.

And many people in China saw some videos from that and came to believe that the reason they died was because of the lockdown,

because firefighters could not get to them in time.

And it sparked these protests because of the built up anger and frustration and grief and loss and fear

that Chinese people have been experiencing for months.

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