China protests - latest: 'Utterly extraordinary' scenes as protesters shout 'down with Xi Jinping'

The map below shows where protests have been happening...

Rishi Sunak has called last orders on the UK government's cosy relationship with China.

The UK needs to "evolve our approach" to China, he declared at the sumptuous Lord Mayor's Banquet at the Guildhall in the City of London.

The so-called "golden era" is over, he said, "along with the naive idea that trade would lead to social and political reform".

Naive? That sounded like a pretty scathing attack on David Cameron and George Osborne. 

It was Mr Cameron, after all, who took President Xi to a country pub near Chequers during a state visit in 2015. Not long after the two leaders supped pints in The Plough at Cadsden in Buckinghamshire, the pub was bought by a Chinese firm. Presumably not what Mr Cameron had in mind for boosting UK-Chinese trade. A bitter irony, one might say.

The term "golden era" was actually used by Mr Osborne during a visit to China in 2015, when he claimed the UK was China's best partner in the West. 

Four prime ministers later  - in just seven years - Mr Sunak lambasted the Chinese in his Guildhall speech. He condemned the assault of BBC journalist Ed Lawrence and said the media and MPs must be able to highlight the crackdowns without sanction.

That included calling out abuses in Xinjiang and the curtailment of freedom in Hong Kong, he added.

But it wasn't just Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne who were derided by the current prime minister. His rejection of "grand rhetoric" in favour of "pragmatism" could only have been directed at one ex-prime minister: Boris Johnson.

In a speech at the Lord Mayor's Banquet, the British prime minister has warned "short-termism or wishful thinking will not suffice" in the face of threats from Russia and China. 

Rishi Sunak said: "We can't depend on Cold War arguments or approaches, or mere sentimentality about our past.

"So, we will make an evolutionary leap in our approach."

This would involve "being stronger in defending our values", he said, and "standing up to our competitors, not with grand rhetoric but with robust pragmatism". 

Turning specifically to China, he said: "Let's be clear, the so-called 'golden era' is over, along with the naive idea that trade would automatically lead to social and political reform...

"We recognise China poses a systemic challenge to our values and interests, a challenge that grows more acute as it moves towards even greater authoritarianism.

"Instead of listening to their people's protests, the Chinese government has chosen to crack down further, including by assaulting a BBC journalist."

He said journalists and politicians should be able to highlight issues "without sanction", including "calling out abuses in Xinjiang - and the curtailment of freedom in Hong Kong".

Alongside allies, he said the UK would "manage this sharpening competition, including with diplomacy and engagement".

Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith has hit out at Rishi Sunak's approach to China, saying his words meant "kind of anything you want it to mean".

The prime minister is set to outline his vision to stand up to competitors in a speech this evening, where he is expected to say he will use "robust pragmatism" rather than "grand rhetoric". 

Mr Sunak will also rule out "short-termism" and "wishful thinking" when dealing with adversaries including Russia and China.

Speaking to Channel 4 News ahead of the speech, Mr Duncan Smith said: "I don't know what more you need as evidence that they now become a threat.

"We even see a BBC journalist being beaten up and dragged away from the protests, and on the very day we see all of that the government comes out with its robust pragmatism, which I think to most people out there means kind of anything you want it to mean, and that sounds to me, like getting pretty close to appeasement."

He warned that by appeasing dictatorships, the government would "drift into dangerous waters".

Tonight's demonstrations are reportedly at a smaller scale currently than they have been over the last few days.

Andrew Small, the German Marshall Fund of the United States Asia Program, told Sky News the protests have "died down a little bit this evening".

However, he said police are still mobilised in large numbers around the protest site. 

The US has thrown its support behind people in China protesting against their government's COVID lockdowns. 

"People should be allowed... the right to assemble and to peacefully protest policies or laws or dictates... that they take issue with," White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters.

"The White House supports the right of peaceful protest."

He added the US had not received any requests from China for vaccines, after experts suggested Chinese President Xi Jinping may need to import Western jabs if he decides to relax his country's coronavirus policy.

For context: Relations between the US and China have been tense in recent years. 

At the first US-China summit between President Xi and President Joe Biden, undiplomatic words were exchanged and it became apparent there remained a difficult relationship between the world's two largest economies. 

The relationship chilled further when US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August, sparking anger from China. 

However, a meeting between Mr Biden and President Xi on the sidelines of the G20 summit appeared to reopen lines of communication between the two countries. 

Our next viewer wants to know whether this could be the beginning of the end of the Chinese president's rule. 

Our international affairs editor Dominic Waghorn says: "I don't think we're going to see some kind of Chinese Spring." 

In the past, Chinese presidents have ruled for two terms but President Xi has secured himself a third term and will go on "indefinitely".

Waghorn says the president has "really entrenched himself in a position of unassailable authority", harking back to an "imperial sense of Chinese leadership".

However, the latest protests - while they may not be able to remove him - "undermine fatally this idea that he's infallible".

Our viewer Luke wants to know whether the Chinese regime could crack down on protesters further if demonstrations continue - and our experts are mostly in agreement that President Xi Jinping is in a tough spot. 

Writer and journalist Lijia Zhang says it could go "both ways" - either the government could crack down, or it could back off somewhat and relax COVID controls. 

She says the public would appreciate at least a timeline of when the coronavirus restrictions could be relaxed as it remains open-ended for now. 

Francis Fukuyama, a political scientist and writer, says President Xi's issue is that China has a very low rate of vaccination. 

It has been unwilling to accept foreign vaccines such as Pfizer or Moderna, and a large number of elderly Chinese people remain unvaccinated. 

As a result, relaxing restrictions could see many deaths from COVID. 

Our international affairs editor Dominic Waghorn agrees, saying the situation is "like a pressure cooker". 

President Xi can either keep the lid on and risk more anger and frustration, or he can release it slightly and everyone gets burned, Waghorn says. 

One option for the Chinese president now - and one he will likely be reluctant to take - it to lose face by importing Western vaccines and admitting the current strategy is not working. 

Questions have been raised over whether the protests are completely about China's zero-COVID policy, or whether they reflect a more general feeling about the government. 

Francis Fukuyama, a political scientist and writer, says the COVID policy is "plenty bad enough" to explain the widespread protests. 

Describing the Chinese government's approach as "draconian", he says as much of a quarter of the country is currently under lockdown. 

Lockdown conditions in China are particularly stringent, meaning people can't leave their homes or visit relatives.

Mr Fukuyama adds there doesn't seem to be a way out of the current situation, as not enough people in China are vaccinated for the country to open up fully. 

Writer and journalist Lijia Zhang adds that the "vast majority" of people in China initially supported the government's approach, but the public has grown weary. 

She says local authorities had been almost "competing" against each other to impose more stringent rules - with one area even testing fish for COVID.

Responding to a question from our viewer Matthew, writer and journalist Lijia Zhang says protests have been cropping up in "something like a dozen cities". 

Our international affairs editor Dominic Waghorn adds to this, saying the protests were "unexpected" and "blew up out of nowhere".

He says the most surprising thing about these demonstrations is that there are so widespread, as they usually tend to be fairly localised and easily dealt with.