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Beijing’s lockdown policy has hit the world’s second-largest economy and sparked mass public protests that have been a rare challenge for Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
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By Keith Bradsher, Chang Che and Amy Chang Chien
For the past three years, China’s most sensible leader, Xi Jinping, has staked his legitimacy on “zero covid,” turning it into an ideological crusade to demonstrate the superiority of centralized government over democratic government. He declared a “people’s war” against the coronavirus, which used lockdowns and quarantines to eliminate infections.
In a remarkable twist, the Chinese government on Wednesday announced a blanket reversal of the rules overall, an implicit concession to public discontent after mass street protests last November posed the most widespread challenge to the ruling Communist Party in decades.
The party appears to be attempting a tactical face-saving retreat that would allow M. Xi to change course without acknowledging that widespread opposition and economic hardship have forced him. Chinese state media described Wednesday’s resolution as a planned transition after Mr Xi secured a victory over a virus that has now weakened.
This resolution may well appease the protesters. But the party is expected to face a wave of infections as lockdowns are lifted, schools reopen and others leave to resume mainstream life. The government will now have to give greater urgency to vaccines, which had been overlooked in recent months, experts say.
The new policy points to some of the most onerous and feared pandemic measures that reflect how intrusive the policy had become. On Wednesday, Beijing largely eliminated regulations requiring mass testing, limited the scope of lockdowns and eliminated mandatory hospitalizations and mass quarantines. He also ordered pharmacies not to ban or sell bloodless or flu-free medicines, a policy enforced in some places to prevent citizens from using over-the-counter fever-reducing drugs and avoid detection.
The adjustments, while not a complete dismantling of “zero Covid,” measures that have weighed on the economy by disrupting the daily lives of millions of people, forcing many small businesses to close and driving youth unemployment to record levels. The changes also seek to calm public anger over the virtual surveillance formula used to track and restrict the movements of virtually everyone.
Under “zero covid,” dozens of officials have been punished or fired after the outbreaks. Cities imposed lockdowns that confined millions of others to their homes for weeks or even months at a time. Citizens and fitness experts who questioned the extent of controls or lockdown issues were punished or silenced.
The controls are harder to justify as fast-spreading variants of Omicron have continued to appear, especially as the rest of the world has increasingly adapted to living with the virus.
“At this point, Xi Jinping also deserves to perceive that this virus cannot be controlled, and if it cannot be controlled, then the opening will have to happen faster or later,” said Deng Yuwen, former editor-in-chief of a Communist Party newspaper, Study Times, who now lives in the United States and writes about Chinese politics. “But most basic of all, the economy can no longer sustain itself. People would sow hell.
For many in China, the relief was immediate. People flocked to Chinese social media and video sites to post emoticons and comments like, “I’m crying, I’ve been waiting for 3 years. “
A migrant employee who protested the shutdown last month at an iPhone production complex in central China said he was extremely happy about the news. “Our voices are heard despite everything,” said the employee, who gave only his last name, Zhang. for fear of reprisals from the authorities. ” We staff will no longer have to be locked up, hungry and repressed. “
Far from signaling defeat in the face of widespread opposition, Chinese state media described Wednesday’s replacement policy as the newest in an endless succession of possible sensible options that resulted in a hard-won victory for China. “Over the past three years, the virus has weakened and we have become stronger,” the official Xinhua news firm wrote Wednesday in an observation titled “Strategic Initiative Winning Through Perseverance. “
For days, the propaganda apparatus has been pushing the concept, long understood elsewhere, that Omicron variants are less fatal than previous iterations of the coronavirus. State officials and the media have quietly abandoned the use of “dynamic covid zero,” a term used in Beijing. to refer to the strategy of containment and quarantine of infections.
The media bombardment showed how the party can shift gears through its propaganda to mask policy mistakes, said Willy Lam, a longtime analyst of China’s policy in Hong Kong and a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation.
Xi “can still insist that he is right about ‘zero covid’ but, out of necessity, he has no choice,” Xi said. Lam, referring to recent protests and the faltering economy.
“Now they seek to cover up the mistakes they made even though everything told the public the fact that the Omicron variant is not life-threatening,” he added.
The protests showed how “Covid zero” had undermined the party’s public support. For many, the expansionary and probably arbitrary measures of the pandemic have become the clearest example of the excesses of M’s authoritarian tendencies. Xi, and opposition to the approach, discovered an unforeseen echo. all over the country.
More importantly, the economic recession caused by “Covid zero” undermined a key precept of the party regime, namely that in exchange for the absence of democratic freedoms, other people would have a solid economic expansion and the possibility of having a better life. Reliance on mass testing and quarantines has also imposed an immense monetary burden on local governments.
“Economically speaking, they can’t stand this,” Mr. Deng. Even if local governments need to close as before, they simply don’t have the money. At the most sensible of that, there were student and public protests, so it’s as if the donkey has finished moving the mill wheel and can be shot: it’s time to open up.
The central government’s announcement came after a series of measures taken in recent days through local governments, specifically in major cities, to relax regulations. Shanghai said it will no longer require citizens to provide a negative PCR test to take the subway or buses or entrance to parks. This week, Beijing removed a similar requirement for access to the city’s main airport, as well as supermarkets, grocery shopping malls and other public places.
Wednesday’s adjustments will lose citizens in many parts of the country from what had become an almost daily task of getting tested only across the country, moving around their villages or using public services. The new policy did not promptly replace regulations for foreign arrivals. , who are subject to at least five days of government-designated quarantine.
People with mild or asymptomatic covid will be able to self-isolate at home and will no longer be sent to hospitals, as has been the case since the virus outbreak. The government gave the impression of maintaining the force to impose blockades, but limited the scope of those measures to buildings, flats or complexes that neighborhoods, districts or towns, and said that these blockades deserve to be lifted quickly.
At the same time, the renewal of politics will bring new demanding situations for the party. Experts warned that China wants to dramatically accelerate its vaccination speed, especially for the elderly, before making big strides in reopening the country. People over the age of 80, who are among the most vulnerable to serious illness or death from Covid infection, have the lowest vaccination rate: only two-thirds gained the first cycle of vaccination, two shots, and only two-fifths received the initial cycle of vaccines plus a booster.
“Obviously, the timing is due to the economic and social hardships we face ‘zero covid,’ but this is diminishing as we approach the bloodless winter months,” said Siddharth Sridhar, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong. Even if China moves at lightning speed to cheer up its vulnerable populations, it will take a few months to vaccinate the numbers needed to reopen.
“If they’re looking at a pivot, they want their defenses because a typhoon is coming,” Dr. Sridhar said.
The rest of the regulations gave the impression of losing the suppressed call after months of telling them to stop sightseeing and family gatherings and stay put. Ctrip, a Chinese booking site, said searches for airline tickets had more than doubled. on the platform. Demand was strong for next month’s Lunar New Year holiday.
At the same time, many other seniors in China worry that opening too temporarily will only expose them to harmful infections, a sign of the public relations challenge that awaits Beijing.
Du Weilin, a 72-year-old Shanghai resident sitting on a roadside bench on Wednesday, said he was concerned about what the new policy might mean for him. ” he said, adding that the only time to do so would be if there were no cases.
Du said he wasn’t vaccinated because he didn’t know the vaccines were effective. “Only your own immune formula works,” he said. Everything has to be done step by step. “
Chris Buckley, Claire Fu and Alexandra Stevenson contributed to the research and Li You contributed to it.
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