For those in China hoping for a respite from the unpredictability of strict COVID rules, there were encouraging symptoms in September when quarantine needs were eased in Hong Kong, which had long agreed with Beijing.
However, hopes were dashed when the central government tightened restrictions over the weekend after a surge in infections attributed to China’s National Day holiday week, which has already been eased due to public health concerns.
This week, Chinese cities began enforcing quarantines, restrictions and mass testing after COVID cases tripled to several thousand in one day.
In Shanghai neighborhoods, which stopped a wave of Omicron in April and May, instant lockdowns have also returned. The vast majority of new infections are mild or asymptomatic, but an estimated two hundred million people across the country are living under some sort of restriction as the government insists on eliminating each and every group as part of its “dynamic covid zero” policy.
China’s severe and immediate lockdowns were an uncompromising attempt to involve outbreaks in the early months of the pandemic before effective vaccines and remedies were widely available. The effects speak for themselves: the country still maintains one of the lowest COVID death rates in the world.
Western governments have tried to impose quarantine where they can, but the maximum has faced at least some public opposition for fear that sweeping emergency powers will not be reserved. On the contrary, a high degree of social protection has become the norm in China.
Instant lockdowns continued until 2022 as part of the 0 COVID strategy. Some cities are experiencing their third major pandemic lockdown, a weeks-long zero tolerance that inevitably hits the national economy hard.
Small and medium-sized business owners have suffered the most, although some of the uncertainties may also discourage foreign investors.
President Xi Jinping would likely have noted China’s initial containment of the virus as evidence of effective governance. However, having connected the function to the political legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its own private legacy, Beijing will have to do so now. Conduct campaign-style advocacy of existing policies.
In early 2022, China dismissed World Health Organization leader Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’ view that 0 COVID was unsustainable. China’s Foreign Ministry called his assessment “irresponsible. “Beijing insists its moves seek the right balance between public health and the economy.
This week, in the People’s Daily, the party’s main newspaper, articles for 3 consecutive days called for “confidence and patience” from the public in the pandemic and the country’s prevention measures.
One was simply titled “‘Dynamic Zero COVID’ is sustainable and will have to be maintained. “Another criticized countries like Japan and the United States for deciding to “stay flat,” a euphemism for giving up. The article warned about the effects of the long COVID as well as the difficulties of daily life after infection.
“In fact, some countries decide to ‘sit back’ and adopt a policy of ‘coexistence with the virus’ not because they don’t need to save you and the epidemic, but because they can’t and don’t have the capacity to do so,” the People’s Daily said Wednesday.
Coming up in the days leading up to the 20th CPC National Congress, where Xi is expected to expand his rule and combine those in leadership positions around him, the articles are a main signal that 0 COVID is untouchable and that leaders don’t need an outbreak to happen. Cast a shadow over the event.
On Weibo, one of China’s leading social media websites, reporting on the People’s Daily articles was all the rage, but its comment sections were blocked, a trail that the government had predicted how the wind would blow. COVID truth – he dies.
About 90 percent of China’s adult population has been fully vaccinated for at least six months, but lawmakers still fear overwhelming the country’s public fitness formula through full opening, given the low vaccination rate among the country’s elderly, about 85 percent of whom are fully vaccinated. .
The long-term effectiveness of the plans produced in China is another uncertainty. Beijing has not yet approved doses of U. S. -made mRNA. In the U. S. , they are more effective at preventing serious illness and can simply supplement a policy of slow reopening, which would inevitably lead to a construction in positive cases.
Coupled with the low number of infections in China since the pandemic began, this means that its population has not been able to close the herbal immune hole after only about 3 years.
Yanzhong Huang, a senior researcher for global fitness at the Council on Foreign Relations, said he saw “no significant difference” between the BF. 7 strain that is lately spreading through China and the Omicron variant that arrived in Shanghai and other cities in the spring.
Xi’s refusal to approve foreign-made mRNA vaccines, partly due to nationalism and also exaggerated security considerations, has been “one of the biggest puzzles of China’s response to COVID,” Huang told Newsweek.
Separating the ideological parts of China’s technique from authentic considerations can be challenging. In practice, the implementation of zero-COVID rules has suffered from performative solutions: sealing entire buildings, locking Americans on sidewalks, and cleaning everything from frozen food to fish and shoes.
The radical nature of the quarantine has left the Chinese public neurotic: they never know when or where the next instant lockdown will happen to them.
The People’s Daily articles were surprising, Huang said, a sign that “domestic and foreign tension is rising to such an extent that they have to say protect 0 COVID. “
“I understand that there is an emerging consensus in China’s middle class, especially in major cities, that 0 COVID is not sustainable and should not be maintained. “
Huang noted “growing discontent” with the excesses of politics. The articles would have targeted this part of the population, he said.
On Thursday, images emerged of a rare protest in Beijing’s Haidian district against the ordeal experienced by some sections of society.
The quagmire of China’s public fitness policy is due to the government’s interpretation of the virus and the point of risk perceived by the general public.
The Chinese fitness government describes Omicron as highly transmissible, which it is, but also very virulent, a description that is inconsistent with the government’s own statistics on the percentage of patients with moderate or severe disease.
Huang suggests that phasing out blocks effective triage measures and mRNA vaccines targeting Omicron. More importantly, Beijing will have to start converting the way it talks about the virus and avoid hints of an “existential threat,” he observed in a recent Foreign Affairs article. .
“If the government persists in shutting down entire urban spaces whenever a few cases occur, China’s economic slowdown may simply turn into an economic crisis,” he wrote, a situation that could threaten “long-term social, economic and even political stability. “. “
“At the end of the day, this is a political decision, a public suitability decision, because this zero-COVID mindset shift has to come from the more sensible right,” he said.
The restrictions are unlikely to be lifted after this weekend’s CPC congress, but Huang believes the strict policy could last only until March 2023, when the giant meeting known as Two Sessions is expected to verify the continuity of Xi’s presidency and offer him a window to come out of scratch. COVID .
Meanwhile, Chinese institutions will quietly prepare for the moment when the policy update arrives.
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