The tragedy has fanned broader calls to ease China’s harsh regimen of Covid tests, urban lockdowns and limits on movement nearly three years into the pandemic.“The demonstrations across the country have been like the spark that lit a prairie fire,” James Yu, a resident of Shanghai, said in an interview, adopting a Chinese phrase used to describe the spread of Mao Zedong’s Communist revolution.The numbers grew, while lines of police officers looked on, and chants broke out, with people calling for an easing of the Covid controls, video footage showed.This month, thousands of factory workers angry over bungled lockdown measures and delays in payment of a promised bonus clashed with riot police and tore down barricades at a huge plant in central China that makes iPhones.Officials and the public, it said, must “firmly overcome slackening and war weariness.” This month, the government issued measures to ease the restrictions that have hampered travel and business."