When a column of smoke appeared on Thursday over the Sitong Bridge overpass in the Haidian district of Beijing, it drew attention to a protester who had hung banners openly bashing China’s top leader by name and criticizing the country’s “zero Covid” policy, including one calling for “freedom and not lockdowns", reports The New York Times.

The incident attracted the attention of people with social media flooding with images and videos of the protest.

The posts were soon removed.

Chinese censors have restricted searches about the episode on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, blocking certain hashtags, including “Beijing,” “Sitong Bridge” and “Haidian.”

Other seemingly related terms that appeared to be blocked from searches on the social media platform were “courage,” “Beijing banner” and “warrior", reports the American newspaper.

Some WeChat users said their accounts were frozen after they shared images of the bridge or sent text messages about the episode.

This prompted some people to flood to the customer service community page of Tencent, WeChat’s parent company, on Weibo, begging that their accounts be returned.

One desperate user wrote about feeling “deeply ashamed” and expressed regret about comments written about the incident in a message group with four people, reports The New York Times.

Congress meet:

Chinese President Xi Jinping heaped praises on the Communist Party's rule as he opened the five-yearly Congress attended by selected delegates who are likely to affirm his third term as the party's chief, media reports said.

He said China has established control over Hong Kong, turning it from chaos to governance, and condemned the external support to Taiwan, calling it interference.

China had imposed sweeping national security law to muzzle pro-democracy demonstrations in 2019.

Beijing claims control over self-governed Taiwan, which considers itself separate from the mainland.

Beijing had "demonstrated resolve and ability to safeguard China's sovereignty…and to oppose Taiwan independence", he said addressing the Communist Party delegates at Beijing's Great Hall of the People, according to BBC.

As the delegates broke into applause, he vowed a "major struggle against separatism and interference" in the self-ruled island of Taiwan.

Xi also defended the lingering Covid lockdowns, saying that the Zero-Covid policy was an "all-out people's war to stop the spread of the virus", he said.

He asserted that the policies had "protected people's safety and health to the highest degree and achieved significant positive results".

The intermittent lockdowns and travel restrictions have evoked anger and taken a heavy toll on the Chinese people and the economy.

He maintained that Covid policies, which are still imposing heavy curbs on people's lives, were for their safety.

Xi also made references to disturbances within the party and said his rule had "removed serious hidden dangers in the party".