Editorial Note: An Asian Perspective on China’s Epidemic (Review and Editorial) Influence on the Lives of Foreigners

Editor’s Note: Matthew Bossons (@MattBossons) is managing editor of the Shanghai-based online publication Radii. He has lived in China since 2014. The opinions expressed are of his own. CNN has more opinion on it.

More than 84,000 people have died in China from the pandemic, according to official figures, the vast majority of them since the government lifted “zero Covid” in December. But those numbers are widely thought to conceal the true scale. Eighty percent of China’s population have been exposed to the current wave of infectious diseases, according to a top government scientist. This would have been unimaginable to us just two months before.

Wu blasted the advice out to his nearly half a million followers on Weibo, China’s heavily censored version of Twitter, and it was quickly picked up and further publicized by state-backed media outlets.

Several Chinese nationals overseas told CNN they had been unable to return home for the last few years because of the lengthy regimen of food and drug testing. Major life moments were missed and spent apart, as a result of that stretch.

Infamously, many of the city’s African residents were expelled from their residences and denied access to hotels despite having not left the country since the pandemic began. Taxi drivers didn’t pick up foreigners and the subway had expats in it, but local commuters hid in the neighboring carriages because they were afraid of contracting the virus.

Did her classmates talk about her advice about foreigners at their homes over the weekend? It was her first time saying this, and as a parent, I was crushed to learn she felt uncomfortable in her own skin.

Despite having Chinese ancestry, my daughter, Evelyn, does not look particularly Chinese, a fact that is often pointed out to my wife, who hails from Jiangsu province in eastern China. As such, she stands out among her classmates, who are all ethnically Chinese.

My worst fears were seemingly confirmed the following Monday evening when Evelyn returned from school and told her mom that she wanted more than anything to “look Chinese.” She said her classmates had made fun of her in the classes by saying “waigouren,” meaning “foreigner” in Chinese.

I traveled by train from Beijing back to my hometown two weeks ago, where I spent the holiday with my grandmother and other relatives. Every year the family gathers together to watch the Annual Gala that is televised in China by the state-run channel. several hours of cheerful entertainment is planned to celebrate the Year of the Rabbit. The slick, feel-good production made no reference to the struggles endured by millions during the outbreak. State-controlled news media never mention them.

This potent mix of propaganda and control under Xi appears to have had its desired effect on a large segment of Chinese society, creating a buffer for the leadership by convincing enough people of the superiority of China’s system even as millions of their fellow countrymen grow resentful of “zero-Covid.” Along with border closing and escalating tensions gives fertile ground for xenophobia.

Chinese experts believe that worse is yet to come. Wang Guangfa, one of the country’s best-known respiratory specialists, predicted that severe and deadly cases of COVID will peak at the end of this month. The hospital warned residents that up to half of the population could be affected by next week.

Fighting back tears, she shouts abuse at the hazmat-suited workers below in a video that has recently gone viral on social media platform Weibo and which appears to encapsulate the Chinese public’s growing frustration with their government’s uncompromising zero-Covid policy.

A woman is shouting at workers while being under sequence for half a year. They stare, seemingly unmoved.

Protest against Xi in Beijing’s “Say No to Covid Test, Yes to Food, Lockdown, No to Revolution, Say No to Food. No to Lockdown. Yes to Freedom. Nonequilibrium

China kept its infection rate low with a “zero COVID” strategy that aimed to stamp out virus transmission by isolating every case. That prompted complaints controls were too extreme and counterproductive.

Observers around the world will be looking for signs of the party’s priorities when it comes to its stance on the economy, which has been blamed for compounding problems from a collapsing housing market to a stagnant economy.

Nerves are high in China’s capital, where online photos posted Thursday appeared to show an exceptionally rare public protest against Xi. “Say no to Covid test, yes to food. No to lockdown, yes to freedom. No to lies, yes to dignity. No to cultural revolution, yes to reform. No to great leader, yes to vote. Don’t be a slave, be a citizen,” read one banner hung over an overpass despite the heightened security surrounding the Congress.

Searches for the site of the protest were immediately removed by Weibo. Before long, key words including “Beijing,” “Haidian,” “warrior,” “brave man,” and even “courage” were restricted from search.

There have been a number of accounts banned from Weibo after they commented on the protest.

Still, many spoke out to express their support and awe. Some shared a Chinese pop hit called “Lonely Warrior”, in a veiled reference to the protester, while others said, “I saw it.”

China’s Zero Covid-19 Crisis Revisited: New Year’s Resolution and Implications for Global Security, Science, and Social Progress

Whether physical lockdowns or digital manipulation, these measures born out of “zero-Covid” have proven such effective means of control in a system obsessed with social stability that many worry Xi and his underlings will never ditch the policy.

More than 300 million people across dozens of cities in China had been affected by full or partial lockdowns at one point last month, according to CNN’s calculations.

Authorities said Wednesday they had detected 2,249 symptomatic Covid-19 cases nationally through nucleic acid testing, 20% of which were detected in the capital Beijing. CNN reporting from the city indicates the case count in the Chinese capital could be much higher than recorded.

Some people in the city have been hoarding drinking water due to the fear of unpredictable and sudden snap lock downs that have backtracked from earlier statements.

The panic buying has been made worse by the fact that the water authorities in China have taken action to keep the water quality up.

There has been an increase in cases of domestic tourists in the country, even though they have been discouraged from traveling or spending over China’s Golden Week holiday.

More than 240,000 students have been locked down on campuses because of the latest outbreak, according to a deputy director of the regional Department of Education. The outbreak on campus has led to the firing of the University Communist Party boss, after 39 students from his institution tested positive.

There are 22 million people banned from leaving the region of western China, as they are required to stay home. There were more than three hundred new cases on Thursday according to the tally.

Yet amid it all, Beijing appears unwilling to move from its hardline stance. For three days this week, the state-run Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily published commentaries reiterating that China would not let its guard down.

“We have now entered a new phase of Covid response where tough challenges remain,” Xi said in a nationally televised New Year’s Eve speech. “Everyone is holding on with great fortitude, and the light of hope is right in front of us. Perseverance and solidarity mean victory, so we should make an effort to pull through.

There was a version of this story that appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter, which was a three-weekly update about what you need to know about the country’s rise and impact on the world. Sign up here.

During China’s National Day holiday in early October, several expatriate friends and I took our young children – who are of mixed races and tend to stand out in a Chinese crowd – to the Great Wall on the outskirts of Beijing.

As we climbed a restored but almost deserted section of the ancient landmark, a few local families on their way down walked past us. Noticing our kids, one of their children exclaimed: “Wow foreigners! With Covid? Let us get away from them. The adults kept quiet as the group sped along.

China’s Great Wall and the 2020 Olympic Games: A Primer from a Top Friend of the China: Zero-Covid, Tainted Trade Crime and Omicron Susceptibility

Since his ascent to the top in 2012 it has become clear that only he can make China great again by restoring the party’s omnipresence and dominance, as well as the country’s rightful place on the global stage.

The Great Wall, a top tourist attraction that normally draws throngs of visitors, was almost empty when we visited thanks to the policy of zero tolerance towards Covid infections that was put in place soon after the global Pandemic began.

China’s borders have remained shut for most international travelers since March 2020, while many foreigners who once called the country home have chosen to leave.

It also boosted China’s confidence that its well-honed zero-Covid playbook of lockdowns, quarantines, mass testing and contact tracing could build an effective defense against highly transmissible Omicron and contain its spread. In the lead up to the Olympics, these measures worked to tame the Omicron outbreak in a port city near Beijing.

Tourism spending plummeted in the last year of a normal year as the so-called “Golden Week” plunged along with holiday travel.

The Chinese economic slowdown poses a massive political challenge for Xi, whose party’s legitimacy in the past few decades has relied on rapid growth and rising incomes for 1.4 billion people. It’s also a harsh reality check for the international community: the world’s longtime growth engine is sputtering, just as the prospect of a global recession emerges.

The system that uses cell phone data to track travel history was introduced in China in an attempt to locate those people who have visited a high-risk city.

Zhou said at a local level the zero- Covid policy was too restrictive, because it was beneficial to the majority.

The country has a really extensive internet filtering and censor system that blocks certain internet content if it is deemed to be harmful to the party. When supported by Artificial Intelligence, censors are able to quickly scrub posts that are seen to be in contradiction to the party line.

The child said something on the Great Wall. The true danger of blaming the foreigners comes when powerful adults exploit it in the face of mounting pressure on the domestic front.

A recent history paper by a government-run research institute has gone viral as it upended a long-held consensus. The authors went against the isolationist policy used by China’s last two imperial dynasties in order to protect national sovereignty and security.

The emperors of those dynasties, who also rebuilt parts of the Great Wall, failed to reverse their country’s decline back then. The tools they had was not up to the standard of those in China. Xi seems confident that his “walls” – among other things – will help him realize his oft-cited ultimate goal: the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

Residents under Covid lockdown in China’s southern manufacturing hub of Guangzhou have torn down barriers meant to confine them to their homes, taking to the streets in defiance of strictly enforced local orders, according to video and images circulating on social media.

In one video, Covid workers in protective medical wear can be seen standing on the sidelines as barriers fall, while trying to speak with people on the streets. The woman in the background of the videos says that they are revolting. CNN has geolocated the images to Haizhu district, but could not independently confirm them.

The clanging sound of metal barriers falling reverberates across the neighborhood and mingles with cheers in the footage, in scenes multiple social media users said took place late Monday evening on district streets.

Reconciliation of social and economic interests in the Guangzhou urban village protest during the first three months of the pandemic crisis – a message from Beijing

It is not clear how many people were involved in the protest, or how long it lasted. The posts were quickly taken down from the Chinese internet.

Zhang Yi, deputy director of the Guangzhou municipal health commission, told a news conference Monday that “pandemic containment measures” will be “enhanced” – a veiled reference for lockdowns – in the entirety of Liwan and Panyu districts, as well as parts of Haizhu and Yuexiu districts.

Top officials in Beijing, including Chinese leader Xi Jinping, have pledged that the measures should be balanced with economic and social interests. The policy was revised last week and discourages unnecessary mass testing.

The policy of quarantining secondary close contacts was largely replaced by a policy of gradual relaxation, officials insist.

Those measures came as Xi prepared for a week of diplomacy attending summits in Southeast Asia in a signal that China was ready to return to the world stage, with Xi meeting with key Western leaders in person this month for the first time since the pandemic began.

But for the citizens back home who are trapped in lockdown, recurring issues like accessing prompt medical care or enough food and supplies, or losing work and income – have over and over again led to hardship and tragedy, including numerous deaths believed to be linked to delayed access to medical care.

Guangzhou’s Haizhu district, where images showed nighttime protests, is home to a number of migrant workers living in densely packed buildings in areas known as “urban villages.”

Their circumstances can compound the hardship of the oppressive measures as the true number of residents needing supplies in a given housing block may be unclear to officials delivering goods. There’s also no option of remote work to preserve income for those employed in factories and on construction sites.

Observers noted that the Haizhu residents from outside Guangzhou pleaded for help from officials such as compensation for rent and free supplies.

In a video that has gone viral on social media, a man can be heard saying the people in the area want to eat. Us Hubei people want to be unsealed!” referring to another province in China, where many migrant workers in the district come from. A crowd is gathered to confront a group of workers in hazmat suits.

A man in a separate scene asks the workers how they’d feel if their parents went sick. If your children are suffering from fever and prevented from leaving (for the hospital), how would you feel?”

In one of the videos, a man in a neighborhood director hat says he wants to address the concerns of the people in the video. A resident rushes forward to accuse the government of leaving non-local residents to queue for hours for Covid-19 testing and then selling rotten meat to them, even though they can get through to local support hotlines.

“Nobody came to explain and the community’s office line is always busy. And our landlord doesn’t care if we live or die. What should we do? While the other people in the crowd shout together, the resident says: Unseal! Unseal!

Lambda Xi’ lost his father, a friend’s father, and a daughter’s mother in the city of Zhengzhou

In the news conference Monday, an official from the Haizhu District acknowledged that restrictions might have been announced earlier and with more clarity.

On the afternoon of November 1, Zhou saw his father live in a video chat, hours after their Beijing home was locked down.

Zhou’s parents and his son lived in an apartment building which did not have any Covid cases, and they didn’t even realize that the restrictions had been imposed.

The family was shocked when Zhou’s father was denied emergency medical help because he was having trouble breathing during the video call. Zhou said that his son and others made a lot of calls for an ambulance, but that security guards were preventing them from going to the hospital with their grandfather.

On the same day Zhou lost his father, a 3-year-old boy was killed in a locked-down compound in the northwest after he was prevented from being taken to a hospital. Two weeks later, a 4-month-old girl died in hotel quarantine in the central city of Zhengzhou after a 12-hour delay in medical care.

Zhou contacted several media outlets in Beijing to report his story, but they did not show up. Despite being aware of the risk of repercussions from the government, he turned to foreign media. CNN is only using his surname to mitigate that risk.

The Covid War in China: A Case Study of the Zhengzhou, Chongqing, and Shijiazhuang

The world’s largest iPhone assembly factory in the central city of Zhengzhou experienced a fight this week with security officers over bonus payment and chaotic Covid rules.

And on Thursday, in the sprawling metropolis of Chongqing in the southwest, a resident delivered a searing speech criticizing the Covid lockdown on his residential compound. Without liberty, I would prefer to die. he shouted to a cheering crowd, who hailed him a “hero” and wrestled him from the grip of several police officers who had attempted to take him away.

Many Chinese football fans have not been able to watch the World Cup in their country because of restrictions and the acts of defiance echo the discontent on the internet.

“None of the fans are seen wearing face masks, or told to submit proof of Covid test results. Are they all living on the same planet? The article questioning China’s insistence on zero-cove was asked by Wechat.

There are signs that Chinese officials are feeling the heat of the growing public discontent, which came on top of the heavy social and economic tolls inflicted by the widening lockdowns.

But it didn’t take long for Omicron to seep through the cracks of zero-Covid. By mid-March, China was battling its worst Covid outbreak since the initial wave of the pandemic, reporting thousands of new cases a day, from northern Jilin province to Guangdong in the south.

Instead of relaxing controls, many local officials are reverting to the zero-tolerance playbook, attempting to stamp out infections as soon as they flare up.

The northern city of Shijiazhuang was among the first to cancel mass testing. After a lengthy period of online classes it was possible to return to school. But as cases rose over the weekend, authorities reimposed a lockdown on Monday, telling residents to stay home.

The financial hub banned everyone from entering venues in the city for five days. Authorities also shut down cultural and entertainment venues in half of the city.

In Guangzhou the district of Haizhu was locked down for a fifth time, and the Baiyun district was put under a dusk to dawn curfew.

Businesses were closed in Beijing on the weekend, and residents either fell sick or were afraid of getting the disease. The biggest public crowds seen were outside of pharmacies and Covid-19 testing booths.

The government should focus on booster shots for the elderly, especially with China’s new year coming up next month and a peak travel time where urban residents visit elderly relatives and return to rural hometown.

What the Chinese Government has done to change the zero-covid policy against pandemics and other deadly diseases: A case study in Shanghai

The zero-covid policy will not be changed in the short term. The incentive structure was not changed. They are still held accountable for the Covid situation in their jurisdiction,” he said.

For their part, Chinese officials have repeatedly denied that the 20 measures listed in the government guidelines were meant for a pivot to living with the virus.

The measures are supposed tooptimize the existing Covid prevention and control policy, according to a disease control official. “They are not an easing (of control), let alone reopening or ‘lying flat’,” he said.

“I don’t want things like this to happen again in China and anywhere in the world,” he said. “I lost my father. My son lost his beloved grandfather. I’m furious now.”

Workers across China have dismantled some of the physical signs of the country’s zero-Covid controls, peeling health code scanning signs off metro station walls and closing some checkpoints after the government unveiled an overhaul of its pandemic policy.

Many residents expressed relief and happiness that there was no need for the measures, but some people were concerned about how the new rules would be implemented.

The world changed very quickly, said a manager at a tech company in Beijing. “I feel like we are getting back to normal life. This is important to me because if I don’t get back to a normal life, I might lose my mind.”

“How can it change so fast?” Ding asked. “It gives me the feeling that we are like fools. It is up to them. They said it’s good, so then it’s good … that’s what I feel right now. I have no choice but to look at it. All I can do is follow the arrangement.

David Wang, 33, a freelancer in Shanghai, said although the changes were welcome, they had also sparked a feeling of disbelief in the city, which underwent a chaotic, more than two-month-long, citywide lockdown earlier this year.

He said he was happy with the new changes, but most of his friends are showing typical signs of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Beijing’s response to Covid-19: Implications for the spread of Omicron, vaccination rate and the level of experience in the country

The top health officials in Beijing said the changes to the rules were based on scientific evidence, including the spread of the Omicron variant, the vaccination rate and China’s level of experience.

Changes that have been made since a wave of unpredendented protests across the country against Covid restrictions are a drastic about-face on the part of the government. While health authorities made slight policy revisions and cautioned officials against overreach last month, the central government up until last week had shown no signs of preparing for an imminent shift in its national strategy.

The government and state media had long emphasized the dangers of the virus and its potential long-term effects – and used this to justify the maintenance of restrictive policies.

State media is trying to change how people think by downplaying the lethality of the Omicron variant. At the same time, a huge drive to vaccinate the elderly is underway.

The outlook is grim. Some studies estimate the death toll could be in excess of a million, if China fails to roll out booster shots and antiviral drugs fast enough.

On China’s heavily- moderated social media platform weibo, topics about what to do if you are bitten by Omicron increased on Thursday morning while there were reports of panic buying of fever medications.

“People were not told what kind of medicine they should have and what they should do if infected until there was widespread infection. In fact, we should have started doing this a long, long time ago,” said Sam Wang, 26, a lawyer in Beijing, who added that the policy release felt “sudden and arbitrary.”

Some people expressed concern about living with the virus. A teacher in Beijing said she wanted to stay safe because she didn’t know what harm a third infection would cause her body.

Younger people and those who live in cosmopolitan urban centers may be more likely to support reopening the country because of concerns about Covid-19 within China.

Identifying high-risk areas during an outbreak of COVID-19 in the early 1920s and early 2000s, and how to manage them

Meanwhile, his mother was now buying high-grade N95 masks and preparing for a “nuclear winter” until a potential initial wave of cases passed, Wang said.

Already there has been some contradiction in how the guidelines are implemented as local authorities adjust – and many are watching to see the impact in their cities.

In Beijing, authorities on Wednesday said a health code showing a negative Covid-19 test would still be required for dining in at restaurants or entering some entertainment venues – in conflict with the national guidelines.

When the health code turned yellow, Hao said she would normally not be allowed in most public places, until she waited for another test that returned a negative result. She stayed at home to watch and see after the new rules came into effect.

Protests against the strict lock downs took place in several cities. Some cities loosened restrictions on testing and movement as a result of those guidelines.

But researchers say some aspects of the new rules are ambiguous and open to interpretation by local governments, including when and where to test people during an outbreak, what defines high-risk areas and how to manage them.

Experts warn that the H1N1 virus could make its way through China’s rural areas when people in big cities return to their hometowns for the lunar new year.

Some studies have estimated China’s abrupt and under-prepared reopening could lead to nearly a million deaths – close to the Covid death toll of the US.

Chinese people go to hospital for mild conditions because the country does not have a strong system for primary medical care, according to Xi Chen.

Without additional support, the eased restrictions might not help businesses to recover from protracted lockdowns or remove the social stigma attached to COVID-19, says Joy Zhang, a sociologist at the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK. “I’m afraid that the health and socio-economic risk will be passed on to individuals.”

Urgent guidance is needed on how to curb transmission during a surge, such as through mask mandates, work-from-home policies and temporary school closures, says Cowling. And given the reduction in testing, it is not clear how officials will track whether cities are approaching, or have passed, the peak of an infection wave, he says.

With fourth-dose vaccination coverage of 85% and antiviral coverage of 60%, the death toll can be reduced by 26% to 35%, according to the study, which is funded partly by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Hong Kong government.

The Beijing Emergency Center and the Covid-19 Detection Crisis in the Run-Up to the 20th Anniversary of the Ghettosuv Epidemic

The mobile itinerary card’s health tracking function was to be deactivated the following day.

It had been a point of contention for many Chinese people, including due to concerns around data collection and its use by local governments to ban entry to those who have visited a city with a “high-risk zone,” even if they did not go to those areas within that city.

The country’s health system will need to answer questions about how to handle a mass outbreak as part of the decision to scrap parts of the zero- Covid infrastructure.

Media outlet China Youth Daily documented hours-long lines at a clinic in central Beijing on Friday, and cited unnamed experts calling for residents not to visit hospitals unless necessary.

Health workers in the capital were also grappling with a surge in emergency calls, including from many Covid-positive residents with mild or no symptoms, with a hospital official on Saturday appealing to residents in such cases not to call the city’s 911-like emergency services line and tie up resources needed by the seriously ill.

The number of emergency calls in Beijing increased from 5,000 to more than 30,000 in the past few days according to Chen Zhi, Chief Physician of the Beijing Emergency Center.

In an interview published by state media Saturday, a top Covid-19 expert said that the company was spreading rapidly in China.

“No matter how strong the prevention and control is, it will be difficult to completely cut off the transmission chain,” Zhong, who has been a key public voice since the earliest days of the pandemic in 2020, was quoted saying by Xinhua.

With official data now meaningless because of the rapid roll out of testing nationwide, it’s difficult to gauge the extent of the spread.

Countless others were less fortunate: Images of overwhelmed hospitals and crematories, along with obituaries, flooded Chinese social media for weeks. My neighbor in Beijing lost her father, grandmother and uncle in the current outbreak. The crush of patients and long waits for ambulances or care at chaotic hospitals all hampered their treatment.

China may not be prepared to handle the expected influx of cases after the surprise move to lift its measures in the wake of nationwide protests.

In order to prepare for the expected increase, the Chinese National Health commission said last Thursday that it was speeding up the expansion of clinics where patients can receive quick medical consultation and supplies from a pharmacy.

There was a shortage of some hot-selling drugs, and the market watchdog pledged to crack down on price piracy, while major online retailer JD.com was also taking steps to make sure there were stable supplies.

A doctor in Beijing said that anyone who tested positive for Covid 19- but had no symptoms would not need to take medication to recover.

“People with asymptomatic inflections do not need medication at all. It is necessary to rest at home and maintain a positive mood. An interview with Li was posted for more than 400 million times on Friday, and has been viewed more than 350 million times ever since.

When the ghost town of Guangzhou changed: What happened to a teacher friend’s quarantine facility when he had tested positive for Covid-19

The Editor-in-Chief of That’s. is, in fact, the author of that magazine. He is living in Guangzhou, China. The views he expresses are his own. Follow him on Twitter @LarsHamer1. CNN has an opinion on it.

There was good reason for me to be worried. Just one month ago, a teacher friend of mine and his colleagues were sent to centralized quarantine after one student at his school tested positive for Covid-19. I feared the same was about to happen to me.

There was nothing of the sort. I didn’t do very well on the Covid-19 test. Before my result even came out, I was free to leave my house and go about my day, totally unrestricted.

If this had happened a few weeks before, I would have been labeled a close contact and therefore powerless to escape the facility.

A few days ago the ghost town of Guangzhou, a city of more than 15 million people, was taken over by the bustling metropolis that I first encountered five years ago.

Just look at the new measure forbidding the blocking of fire exits in the event of a lockdown, for example. Now, people who are infected can isolate themselves at home. Quarantine facilities are going to be a thing of the past.

Friends and families who had not seen each other for months gathered in bars and restaurants, and QR codes were being ripped down from walls; our movements no longer tracked.

Millions of people were confined to their homes, and I spent most days working late at night because it was the only thing I could do. I too began to feel the strain and started considering leaving the country.

It was a moment of total disbelief. The number of cases that day in Guangzhou was similar to those that led to a city-wide lock down inShanghai in April.

An update of COVID-19 deaths in China from the Lunar New Year after the Decreasing Decay of the National Health Service

BEIJING — Some Chinese universities say they will allow students to finish the semester from home in hopes of reducing the potential of a bigger COVID-19 outbreak during the January Lunar New Year travel rush.

It wasn’t clear how many schools were taking part, but universities in Shanghai and nearby cities said students would be given the option of either returning home early or staying on campus and undergoing testing every 48 hours. The Lunar New Year, which falls on Jan. 22 this year, is traditionally China’s busiest travel season.

Universities have been the scene of frequent lockdowns over the past three years, occasionally leading to clashes between the authorities and students confined to campus or even their dorm rooms.

The government ended many of its strictest measures last week following three years of strict virus restrictions.

Protesters demanded that China’s most powerful and authoritarian leader step down in a defiant act of political defiance.

While met with relief, the relaxation has also sparked concerns about a new wave of infections potentially overwhelming health care resources in some areas.

On Monday, the government said it would scrap quarantine requirements for travelers arriving from abroad, also effective Jan. 8. Foreign companies welcomed the change as an important step to revive slumping business activity.

It has been decided to ease control measures on the mainland, which has resulted in a sharp drop in testing from which daily infections numbers are compiled, but cases appear to be rising rapidly, with many testing at home and staying away from hospitals.

How the NHC came up with the estimates cited by Bloomberg and the Financial Times is unclear, as China is no longer officially tallying its total number of infections, after authorities shut down their nationwide network of PCR testing booths and said they would stop gathering data on asymptomatic cases.

Facing growing skepticism that it is downplaying Covid deaths, the Chinese government defended the accuracy of its official tally by revealing it had updated its method of counting fatalities caused by the virus.

Chinese PMC warned against COVID-19 after a fatal apartment fire in Urumqi: The problem of supply and demand for medicine in the country

The U.S. consulates in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang and the central city of Wuhan will offer only emergency services from Tuesday “in response to increased number of COVID-19 cases,” the State Department said.

“Mission China makes every effort to ensure the availability of full consular services for U.S. citizens in the People’s Republic of China,” the message said.

Amid the unpredictable messaging from Beijing, experts warn there still is a chance the ruling party might reverse course and reimpose restrictions if a large-scale outbreak ensues.

Then, in late November, a deadly apartment fire in the western city of Urumqi finally ignited public anger that had been simmering for months. Even though the official denials were not true, many thought that the lockdown measures had hampered rescue efforts.

The drug shortage has spread from mainland China to Hong Kong, a special administrative region which has a separate system of local government. On Sunday, the chief of the city’s health dept urged the public to refrain from buying cold medicine that they don’t need.

Many parts of China have canned yellow peaches which are popular in the area as a way to fight Covid. The product is currently sold out on many online shops.

The record was set straight by The People’s Daily. It published a long post on Sunday saying peaches were useless in alleviating symptoms of illness.

The public was urged not to store medical supplies. On Monday, the Beijing city government warned residents that it was facing “great pressure” to meet demand for drug and medical services because of panic buying and an influx of patients at clinics.

The Shenzhen-based Guizhou Bailing Group Pharmaceuticals’ shares have risen since the beginning of the month, and have gained 21% this week. Yiling Pharmaceutical has seen its share price increase more than 30% in the past month.

“Our company’s production lines are operating at full capacity, and we are working overtime to produce urgently needed medicines, such as ibuprofen tablets,” Xinhua Pharmaceutical said Monday.

In some Hong Kong drugstores, fever drugs such as Panadol, the local brand name for Tylenol, have sold out. Most of the people buying the medicines were sending it to their families and friends on the mainland, according to sales representatives.

The Rise of China’s Burial Places in 2023: Inflation, Vaccination Rates, and Hospitalization Capacity

Providers of funeral services and burial plots have gotten a boost. Since last month, Fu Shou Yuan International’s shares have jumped more than 50%.

There is “strong pent-up demand for burial plots” in 2023, analysts from Citi Group said in a recent research report, adding that they’ve noticed increasing investor interest in the sector.

There are hundreds of thousands of cremated remains stored in government facilities waiting to be buried. Lockdowns across much of the country have halted funeral services, they said.

Instagram has enjoyed more popularity than Twitter among Chinese with access to the global internet (sometimes via VPN) due to its initially apolitical, entertainment-heavy content. As the number of Chinese users grew, meme boards featuring the lives of study-abroad Chinese students emerged. The founders could not have imagined that their personal meme accounts would become radicalized along with their followers. The pages can roughly be divided into two types: meme pages and nostalgic mood boards.

The country is not prepared for such a drastic exit and has not done enough to boost the elderly vaccination rates, increase surge and intensive care capacity, or get ready for antiviral medications.

Under the current conditions, a nationwide reopening could result in up to 684 deaths per million people, according to the projections by three professors at the University of Hong Kong.

The research paper released last week said that the rise in infections would likely overload many local health systems.

Simultaneously lifting restrictions in all provinces would lead to hospitalization demands 1.5 to 2.5 times of surge hospital capacity, according to the study.

They were the first officially reported deaths since the dramatic easing of restrictions on December 7, although Chinese social media posts have pointed to a surge in demand at Beijing’s funeral homes and crematoriums in recent weeks.

Crematoriums and funeral homes in Beijing say they are already overwhelmed, despite the lack of officially reported COVID deaths. At Beijing’s biggest crematorium, a line of hearses filled the intake lot earlier this week, while the waiting time for cremation was at least 10 days.

Other cities are seeing an increase in infections. Most of the classes in schools in Shanghai are online from Monday. In the southern metropolis of Guangzhou, authorities have told students that are already taking online classes and pre-schoolers not to prepare for a return to school.

In the megacity of Chongqing in the southwest, authorities announced on Sunday that public sector workers testing positive for Covid can go to work “as normal” – a remarkable turnaround for a city that only weeks ago had been in the throes of a mass lockdown.

And experts warn the worst is yet to come. While some major metropolises like Beijing may have seen the peak of the outbreak, less-developed cities and the vast rural hinterland are still bracing for more infections.

“The results showed that Guangzhou already passed the recent wave, while Beijing, Shanghai, and Chongqing urban areas are in the midst of the current wave that would likely pass by the end of 2022,” the study said.

Every year, hundreds of millions of people who have left their hometowns to build a life in China’s fast growing cities pour into trains, buses and planes to see their family – a weeks-long travel rush known as the largest annual human migration on Earth.

A researcher at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions says village doctors and even the county hospital cannot handle the increased incidence of severe cases. “I think the rural villagers are just left on their own in a dark COVID winter.”

As the Lunar New Year approaches, health officials are concerned the celebrations could turn into superspreader events, catching rural systems off guard and driving up infections in a country where natural immunity is nearly non-existent and vaccine hesitancy has remained stubbornly high among the older population.

As the travel rush for the Lunar New Year – the most important festival for family reunion in China – begins this week, hundreds of millions of people are expected to return to their hometowns from big cities, bringing the virus to the vulnerable countryside where vaccination rates are lower and medical resources even scarcer.

In its latest briefing, IHME forecasts up to 1 million deaths in 2023 if China does not maintain social distancing policies — a prediction echoed by another model released by researchers at University of Hong Kong last week.

China’s state media outlets have emphasized the message of the latest Omicron variant being light, which has contributed to vaccine hesitancy.

“As the experts say, just set off some fireworks, have a good party and scare away the virus,” says Sun Caiyun, an ebullient restaurant owner in Beijing who says she is intent on heading back to her home village in the northern Shandong province – COVID or not. “Of course I am planning on returning home, because Beijing bans firecrackers!”

The recent graduate of a village in China’s southernJiangsu province told us that people from the cities have been coming to her village and buying all of their medicines, or they would order it online and have the pharmacy mail it to them. She worries most about her asthmatic grandparents; the nearest hospital, she says, is two hours away.

The focus on containing the virus for nearly three years has now left China little prepared for treating the infected. “Vaccines for the elderly and the use of antivirals were all thrown out the window due to the lack of funds,” saysYanzhongHuang, a senior fellow following public health.

Ray Yip, an epidemiologist who founded the Center for Disease Control’s office in China, says the number they are willing to show the deaths is “almost bordering on ridiculous.”

There were some elderly patients who were in need of beds in the lobby of the hospitals that NPR visited this week in Beijing.

So far, the health care system has held up in large cities – in part because many migrant workers have only rural health insurance that cannot be used in urban hospitals.

“You just have to suck it up and leave,” saysZhang Xiaohu, a delivery worker who contracted COVID in December. He works through his symptoms without paid sick leave because he can’t afford to go to a Beijing hospital. “Being a delivery guy means you have to be the kind of person who dares to risk their lives.”

One man waiting in line said his grandfather started running a fever last week and tested positive for COVID, but they spent days looking for a hospital that could take him.

China abandoned zero-covid and left empty streets and crowded hospital wards. When CNN visited a Beijing crematorium last week, cars lined up to enter, filled with grieving family members who had been waiting more than a day to cremate loved ones who died of Covid.

If correct, the estimate – which CNN cannot independently confirm – would account for roughly 18% of China’s 1.4 billion people and represent the largest Covid-19 outbreak to date globally.

The figures cited were presented during an internal meeting of China’s National Health Commission (NHC) on Wednesday, according to both outlets – which cited sources familiar with the matter or involved in the discussions. The NHC summary of Wednesday’s meeting said it delved into the treatment of patients affected by the new outbreak.

On Friday, a copy of what was purportedly the NHC meeting notes was circulated on Chinese social media and seen by CNN; the authenticity of the document has not been verified and the NHC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention gave the figures to officials during a closed-door meeting, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Covid deaths in China are likely to experience chaos rather than progress, according to a NHC report on symptomatic cases of Covid

The figures are in stark contrast to the public data of the NHC, which reported just 62,592 symptomatic Covid cases in the first twenty days of December.

According to the latest NHC guidelines, only deaths caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure after contracting the virus are classified as Covid deaths, Wang Guiqiang, a top infectious disease doctor, told a news conference Tuesday.

The minutes of the NHC meeting did not mention the subject of how many people may have died in China, according to both reports and the document CNN viewed.

Analysts from Capital Economics said in a research note last week that the number of people on the streets had dropped off sharply. “That will be affecting demand.”

“In the short run, I believe China’s economy is likely to experience chaos rather than progress for a simple reason: China is poorly prepared to deal with Covid,” said Bo Zhuang, senior sovereign analyst at Loomis, Sayles & Company, an investment firm based in Boston.

Top leaders have signaled recently that they would shift focus back to growth next year and have bet on the relaxation of pandemic restrictions to lift the economy.

Auto and home sales slumped during the first few weeks of December due to the Covid outbreak: a summary from the Chinese National Electric Vehicle Association

Car and home sales slumped in the first few weeks of December. Statistics from the China Passenger Car Association show that auto manufacturers sold less vehicles in the month of December this year than they did in the same period last year. Wind said that home sales by floor area plummeted in the 30 biggest cities from the same week last year. Home sales in tier-one cities plummeted last week from a year ago.

Statistics from the transportation ministry and the postal service regulators show a decline in truck cargo volumes in the last week.

Factories have also cut back production. Key industries like cement and chemical fibers have all reported lower utilization rates of their existing production capacity.

BYD, the country’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer, said it had to slash production by 2,000 to 3,000 vehicles per day as more workers are unable to work.

“The Covid outbreak has severely impacted our production,” Lian Yubo, vice president of BYD, said Thursday at a forum in Shenzhen. “20% to 30% of our employees are sick at home.”

According to a report on Monday, several furniture plants in the east have told their employees to take a long vacation in order to celebrate the Chinese New Year. This year the lunar new year holiday falls in the middle of January.

A newspaper last week reported that at least 60% of the textile and dyeing companies in the coastal provinces have decided to suspend production and have a long holiday.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/26/economy/china-covid-surge-economy-strain-intl-hnk/index.html

Beijing to begin distribution of Pfizer Covid-19 drug to the local community health centers in the coming days as a response to city crowds

“With the migration to rural areas ahead of Lunar New Year getting started, any parts of the country not currently in a major Covid wave are likely to be soon,” they said.

Beijing will begin distributing Pfizer’s Covid-19 drug Paxlovid to the city’s community health centers in the coming days, state media reported Monday.

The state-run China News Service reported Monday that after receiving training, community doctors will administer the medicine to Covid-19 patients and give instructions on how to use them.

The worker at the local community HEALTH center in Beijing said it was not clear when the drugs would arrive.

An emergency room doctor in Beijing told the state-run People’s Daily on Thursday that four doctors on his shift did not have time to eat or drink. “We have been seeing patients nonstop,” he said.

Another emergency room doctor told the newspaper he had been working despite having developed fever symptoms. The doctor said the number of patients is high and that the pressure is increased with fewer medical staff.

In a sign of the strain on Beijing’s medical system, hundreds of health professionals from across China have traveled to the city to assist medical centers.

Despite all this uncertainty, Chinese citizens are celebrating the partial reopening of the border after the end of quarantine for international arrivals and the resumption of outbound travel.

The border is mostly closed to foreigners, apart from a limited number of family visits, though the government indicated Monday that may change.

Seeing the end of the pandemic with the Chinese border quarantine: A new perspective on a loss of a normal life for a sick Asian citizen

“Finally, everybody can (live) their normal life,” said one Chinese national living in New York, who hasn’t been home for four years. She called the separation “very painful,” saying several of her family members and the beloved pet dog she grew up with had died during that time.

Her family “missed (my graduation). She said that they missed so many things. “And I also missed so many things for my family. My friends got married during the epidemic. Even some of them had babies. I feel like I missed everything, I missed the most important points in their lives.”

May Ma, 28, has been unable to go home for nearly three years while living in South Korea. The worst thing about the quarantine requirements had been worrying about her grandparents’ health, and not knowing if she’d be able to return in time to say goodbye if anything were to happen, she said.

Throughout the pandemic, “the scariest thing was … not knowing where the end is, not knowing when I can go back,” she said. “I definitely feel very happy, I can finally see the end.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/china-border-quarantine-travel-reax-intl-hnk/index.html

Chinese border quarantine travel: What have we learned from Trips.com’s peak in search volume since the New Year holiday season?

Those within China are also celebrating and anticipating outbound travel. Most people have not left the US for a long while and are now flooding booking sites to plan vacations.

Trips.com, a Chinese travel booking website, had a peak in online searches for outbound flights and hotels in the last three years. Within half an hour of the announcement, searches for popular destinations increased tenfold, with people searching for group tours during the New Year holiday season.

Macao, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand, South Korea, the United States and the United Kingdom were among the website’s top 10 destinations with the fastest growth in search volume since the announcement.

A Chinese national in New York said that it was a mess. Everybody is sick. So, at least I think right now, it’s not the best time to visit my family. It’s possible two or three months later.

Overseas destinations are on guard. The Malpensa airport in Milan was asked by the Lombardy region to test all arrivals from China until the end of January.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/china-border-quarantine-travel-reax-intl-hnk/index.html

The first shock of COVID-19: When the United States and China reunited to “reinstating China as a priority investment destination”

“It doesn’t matter if I can get back in time for Spring Festival,” said Ma in South Korea, referring to Lunar New Year. I can accept waiting a little while longer, there is hope after all.

Visitors who test positive will be kept out of the country for a week. He said Japan also would reduce a planned increase in the number of flights between Japan and China “just to be safe.”

The ruling Communist Party’s abrupt decision to lift some of the world’s strictest anti-virus controls comes as it tries reverse an economic downturn. Hospitals have been filled with sick patients as the virus spreads, but curbs that confined millions of people to their homes have ended.

The British Chamber of Commerce hopes that China will restart normal processing of business visas to allow for the return of crucial people to people exchanges. It said that will “contribute to restoring optimism and reinstating China as a priority investment destination.”

Travelers from China were required to have their virus tests done in Japan and India. The U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Washington was considering taking similar steps.

The ruling party has started joining other governments that are trying to live without the virus by treating it rather than imposing strictQuarantines on cities or neighborhoods.

The ruling party said the changes were made because of the economic downturn. More changes were announced following protests that erupted Nov. 25 in Shanghai and other cities.

Lu Haoming is an architect from Beijing and said the government should have done the job in a more careful way. “Although the death rate of this disease is not as serious as at the beginning, the first shock has still been quite severe.”

On Monday, the National Health Commission downgraded COVID-19 from a Class A infectious disease to a Class B disease and removed it from the list of illnesses that require quarantine. It said authorities would stop tracking down close contacts and designating areas as being at high or low risk of infection.

2022 was a Triumphant Year for China: The End of the Cold War and the Beginning of a New Millennium in Political and Social Change

2022 was supposed to be a triumphant year for China and its leader Xi Jinping, as he began his second decade in power with a pledge to restore the nation to greatness.

The beginning of the year was a stark contrast to the chaotic and disorganized start that Beijing displayed by keeping the coronaviruses at bay from the Winter Olympics.

The success added to the party’s narrative that its political system is superior to those of Western democracies in handling the pandemic – a message Xi had repeatedly driven home as he prepared for a third term in power.

And so instead of vaccinating the elderly and bolstering ICU capacity, authorities wasted the next crucial months building larger quarantine facilities, rolling out more frequent mass testing, and imposing wider lockdowns that at one point affected more than 300 million people.

Protests erupted across the country, on a scale unseen in decades. On university campuses and the streets of major cities, crowds gathered to call for an end to incessant Covid tests and lockdowns, with some decrying censorship and demanding greater political freedoms.

The nationwide demonstrations posed an unprecedented challenge to Xi. The economic strain became too severe, and the country had seemingly spun out of control, with a daily record of over 40,000 infections.

The abruptness of the easing of restrictions has caught many people by surprise and left them to fend for themselves.

Now, the true scale of the outbreak and deaths could deal a serious blow to the credibility of a government that had justified years of painful restrictions on the grounds that they were necessary to save lives.

The China Embassy in the midst of a World Wide Economic Disaster during the 2015 Lunar New Year: How many Chinese tourists are allowed to travel abroad?

China will be able to issue ordinary visas and passports again as of next month, a move that will allow millions of chinese to travel abroad for the lunar new year holiday.

January is when applications for passports for tourists to go abroad will be accepted by the Immigration Administration of China. It said it will resume issuing approval for tourists and businesspeople to visit Hong Kong, a Chinese territory with its own border controls.

The agency said it will take applications for ordinary visas and residence permits. The government will gradually resume allowing in foreign visitors but gave no indication when full-scale tourist travel from abroad might be allowed.

During the pandemic, Chinese with family emergencies or whose work travel was deemed important could obtain passports, but some students and businesspeople with visas to go to foreign countries were blocked by border guards from leaving. The handful of foreign businesspeople and others who were allowed into China were quarantined for up to one week.

Before the pandemic, China was the biggest source of foreign tourists for most of its Asian neighbors and an important market for Europe and the United States.

According to the American Chamber of Commerce in China, more than 70% of companies said that the latest outbreak would last no more than three months.

As Russia suffered humiliation in the Middle East, Chinese state media stopped pro-Russia talk, while Xi agreed to stand against the use of nuclear weapons for the sake of the West.

China-2023 Look Ahead: Restoring its Relationships with the Restricted Countries and the Implications for The Rise of China’s GDP

An explosion of cases led to little preparation in place to deal with a surge of patients after the lifting of restrictions.

economies dependent on Chinese demand will get a boost from an increase in China’s growth. There will be more international travel and production. Global inflation will be put under pressure by higher prices of energy and raw materials.

Other experts also expect the economy to recover after March. In a recent research report, HSBC economists projected a 0.5% contraction in the first quarter, but 5% growth for 2023.

Within minutes of the declaration on December 26, travel websites experienced huge spikes in traffic, despite a few residents worried about the rapid easing of restrictions.

Some countries have offered a warm welcome back, with foreign embassies and tourism departments posting invitations to Chinese travelers on Chinese social media sites. Many countries impose new testing requirements on travelers from China and its territories.

With China getting out of its self-imposed isolation, all eyes are on the country to see if it can repair its relations with other countries.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/02/china/china-2023-lookahead-intl-hnk-mic/index.html

The Covid-19 epidemic in China: a new perspective on the EU, Russia and the mid-term future of diplomacy in the next few years

Not having top-level face-to-face diplomacy did not help, neither did the freeze on in-person exchanges among policy advisers, business groups and the wider public.

More high-level exchanges are in the works, with the US Secretary of State, French President, Dutch Prime Minister and Italy’s newly elected Prime Minister expected to visit Beijing this year.

Tensions over Taiwan may Flare in the New Year, as well as China’s Support for Russia, after a virtual Meeting with Putin on December 30.

According to Chinese state media, the two countries should strengthen strategic coordination to inject more stability into the world.

Beijing has long refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or even refer to it as such. It has instead decried Western sanctions and amplified Kremlin talking points blaming the US and NATO for the conflict.

But few experts believe China will distance itself from Russia, with several telling CNN the two countries’ mutual reliance and geopolitical alignment remains strong – including their shared vision for a “new world order.”

“(The war) has been a nuisance for China this past year and has affected China’s interest in Europe,” said Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Washington-based think tank Stimson Center. The damage is not large enough for China to abandon Russia.

The spread could be “dramatically enhanced” by travels expected during the upcoming Spring Festival, a national holiday period surrounding the Lunar New Year, which falls on January 22, the study said.

Researchers from universities and health institutions in Shanghai modeled the curves of daily new Covid-19 cases and accumulated total cases from October to November before the country started easing its testing requirements.

The study suggests that the Omicron outbreak in the Chinese mainland may appear in multiple waves and the reappearance of new local Surges in late 2023.

The role of China in wooing back foreign investors and businesses: a survey of the country’s economic president, vice premier, and top economic policymakers

Emergency measures should be used to give medicine to patients who are low-risk and under 60 years old. It also recommended to timely treat high risk populations that are vaccinated and older than 60 years with anti-viral drugs.

China has been trying to woo back foreign investors and businesses since nearly three years of disrupted supply chains, delayed logistics, stringent regulation and locked factories shut down.

“More focus will be placed on expanding domestic demand, keeping supply chains stable, supporting the private sector, reforming the state-owned enterprises, attracting foreign investment and preventing economic and financial risks,” Liu He, the country’s vice premier and one of its top economic policymakers, reassured business elite gathered at Davos in Switzerland earlier this month.

She says China-watchers are still waiting to see more substantial pro-business policy changes, such as giving private and foreign firms equal access in technology and certain industrial sectors and reducing tariffs on imported goods.

She says it is not enough to talk about these things. The practice of it has to align with the message in order to encourage foreign investors.

The official 3%GDP growth figure is for the year of 2022. The market didn’t think the numbers were true. That’s not encouraging. It’s important to start releasing accurate numbers so investors can trust you again.

It’s really up to the consumer to decide if people are going to dine out. Are they willing to spend on entertainment and leisure goods? Nick Marro, a senior analyst with the Economist Intelligence Unit research firm, asked if they are willing to return to China’s malls and markets and support the retail environment.

However, they’re also risk-averse and sensitive to any perception that China could reverse course on public health policy and economic reopening again, Marro says. “We think the consumer recovery will be very drawn out.”

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/30/1151375846/china-economy-business-covid

Paxlovid: How quickly can the virus spread? A Texas epidemiologist’s perspective on her experience with a Covid medicine in China

Lauren AncelMeyers, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Texas, said that part of the equation for how long the immunity lasts is how quickly the virus is evolving.

She says: “What is the next variant that’s going to emerge and spread over the world? What does it look like to be on the spread of the vaccine that they use to keep people safe?

Natural immunity may be possible because of a large-scale level of infections. But China’s economy is far from being immune to further shocks.

Earlier, I had purchased bottled oxygen and other supplies for Grandma. I wanted Paxlovid, an anti-clotting drug used to treat Covid. China approved imports early last year, but supplies had been gobbled up, with packs of single, five-day courses selling for well over $7,000 on the black market at one point, around 20 times the standard price. Many people bought generic versions illegally imported from India.

After two weeks of searching, I finally placed an order online. But the drug must be taken within five days from the onset of symptoms, and by the time it arrived, Grandma was past that. I cooked and cared for her, and barely slept while I was there. Thankfully, she slowly improved by mid-January.

Do stray cats leave the country now that they are gone? A friend of mine finds a way to feed her cat with grain alcohol during Lunar New Year

The Chinese just finished celebrating the Lunar New Year holiday, which in China is called the Spring Festival. It is usually the most joyful time of the year, with hundreds of millions of people coming back to their hometown for family reunions, feasts, toasts of fiery grain alcohol and gifts of cash. The holiday remind my neighbor of loss and pain every year. I would follow her posts on social media and often see her feeding stray cats outside. She’s considering Leaving the country now she doesn’t.