What will my daughter, Evelyn, do when I return to Shanghai, when she becomes a kindergarten teacher, look like if I look Chinese?
Matthew Bossons is an editor and a journalist in China. He has lived in China since 2014. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. You can view more opinions on CNN.
Having lived through the wave of xenophobia that accompanied the closure of China’s borders in the spring of 2020 – when Covid-19 was largely under control in China and running rampant abroad – Wu’s proclamation associating foreigners with disease immediately triggered alarm bells.
The advice was quickly picked up and further publicized by state-supported media as a result of the blast out to his 500,000 followers on Weibo.
I left the airport without knowing anything about self-isolating after returning to Shanghai from Guangzhou, China, which was dealing with a Covid-19 outbreak.
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. Out of fear of contracting the virus, taxi drivers refused to pick up foreigners, gyms turned away non-Chinese patrons and expats on the subway found themselves with more personal space than usual as local commuters fled for the neighboring carriage.
These memories came flooding back in the wake of Wu’s social media post. While I pondered how I might be received at the local bus station after work the next day, a bigger concern hovered: How would my five-year-old daughter be treated at the local Kindergarten in our new home base of Shanghai? In July 2020 we moved from Guangzhou to Beijing, and in July 2021, we relocated from Beijing to Shanghai.
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 that her classmates made her feel uncomfortable by calling her “foreigner” in Mandarin Chinese.
Ms Sun is now known as China’s “zero- Covid” czar. She is usually the subject of mockery and frustration online when she enters a city that is in the midst of an outbreak.
As I made my way to the Chinese Consulate on New York’s Upper West Side on a Tuesday evening, I was met with a crowd of Chinese youth, united in their grief over the apartment fire in Urumchi and their anger at the Chinese government’s draconian zero-covid policy. The rally quickly became a condemnation of the authoritarian regime, with cries of “Down with Xi Jinping! The air was filling with ” Down with CCP!” A friend and I held up a banner that read “Freedom or Death”, and joined the march to Pier 84. He said as we crossed the street that he would see ourselves on one of the meme pages.
In Guangzhou, the vast majority of new Covid cases were found to be mild, as Beijing is in the midst of a drive to stamp out the spread of the virus.
Zhou’s anger is part of a growing torrent of dissent toward China’s unrelenting zero-Covid lockdowns, which officials insist are necessary to protect people’s lives against a virus that, according to the official count, has killed just six people from tens of thousands of symptomatic cases reported in the last six months.
The woman has been under escort for half a year since she returned to school. They looked back, seemingly unmoved.
Nod to Covid Test, yes to Food, no To Lockdown, yes To Demonstration, and yes to Elections in China
While most Asian economies – even those with previously hardline zero-Covid stances – are abandoning pandemic-era restrictions, authorities in China remain zealous in theirs, repeatedly insisting this week in state-run media articles that the battle against the virus remains “winnable.”
Observers across the world will be watching the twice-a-decade meeting for signs of the party’s priorities when it comes to its zero-Covid stance, which has been blamed for exacerbating mounting problems in the economy, from stalled growth to a collapsing housing market.
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. Yes, to reform, not to cultural revolution. No to great leader, yes to vote. One banner that was hung over an overpass read, “Don’t be a slave, be a citizen.”
@Northern_Square, a protest account that currently boasts 88,000 followers, started as an art project by a US-based artist who goes by Bei. Bei started posting photos from online archives that show the joy and solidarity shown by the Tiananmen protesters, because she was so enamored by the aesthetic of 80s and 90s China. I asked if he intended to be aggressive, and he told me that he wasn’t much of a word person or had the intention of doing anything aggressive.
Several accounts that commented on the protest have been banned from Weibo and WeChat, the country’s most popular social network and messenger app.
Still, many spoke out to express their support and awe. Some shared a Chinese pop hit called “Lonely Warrior” in a nod to the protester, while others posted under the # to say: “I saw it.”
The latest Shanghai Covid-19 lockdowns have rattled Beijing, prompting outrage and protests on the country’s most populous social sector
It didn’t take long for an answer. The stance of the nation towards zero-covid was reinforced by Chinese president in his opening speech after securing his third term.
In Shanghai, where 25 million people have already experienced two months of the world’s strictest lock-down, residents are on high alert for any signs of a repeat.
The city reported 47 Covid-19 cases on Thursday, one day after authorities ordered six out of its 13 districts to shut entertainment venues such as internet cafes, cinemas and bars. Shanghai’s Disney resort has suspended some of its attractions and live performances since Sunday.
Spooked by the possibility of unpredictable and unannounced snap lockdowns – and mindful that authorities have previously backtracked after suggesting that no such measures were coming – some people in the city have reportedly been hoarding drinking water.
That panic buying has been made worse by an announcement that Shanghai’s water authorities have taken action to ensure water quality after discovering saltwater inflows to two reservoirs at the mouth of the Yangtze River in September.
The country has also seen an uptick in cases in domestic tourist destinations, despite its strict curbs having discouraged people from traveling or spending over China’s Golden Week holiday in early October.
A deputy director of the regional Department of Education says more than 240,000 university students have been locked down due to the latest outbreak. And the outbreak on campus has led to punitive action, with one university Communist Party boss being sacked after 39 students from his institution tested positive.
There is a situation in western Xinjiang, where 22 million people have been forbidden from leaving the region and are required to stay. According to the tally, 403 new cases were recorded on Thursday.
Beijing seems unwilling to budge 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.
Xi and the Great Wall: The Making of China Great Again after the COVID-19 Epidemic in the October 2017 Evening in China
“Your adherence to the central Covid policy is what mattered,” he said. Economic growth numbers are reduced to, ‘we don’t have a Covid outbreak, everything’s ok.’
Editor’s Note: A version of this story appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter, a three-times-a-week update exploring what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world. You have to sign up here.
We took our children, who are of mixed races, to the Great Wall on the outskirts of Beijing when we were in China for the National Day holiday in October.
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’s get away from them…” The adults sat still as the group moved quickly.
Since his ascent to the top in 2012, Xi’s ruling philosophy has become increasingly clear: Only he can make China great again by restoring the party’s – thus his – 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 during holidays, stood nearly empty when we went because of a policy of zero tolerance for Covid infections that was put in place three years into the global epidemic.
People will be less likely to go to the COVID-19 hot spots after China stopped tracking some travel. There is no word on when the international borders in China will be open for inbound travelers and Chinese wanting to go overseas.
With the highly contagious Omicron variant raging through parts of the country, authorities had discouraged domestic travel ahead of National Day holiday. Entire cities are often locked down due to a few cases and they are also sticking to a very strict policy of mass testing and contact tracing.
Tourism spending fell to less than half of what it was in the last normal year due to the so-called Golden Week.
The Chinese Communist Party and the First Great Wall: A Realistic Challenge for the Governing Body of the Chinese Nation and for the International Community
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.
China boasted more security cameras than any other country. The government can check the Covid status of people in real time with the help of mandatory apps. Authorities can easily confine someone to their home by remotely switching the health app to code red – and they did just that on several occasions to stop potential protesters from taking to the streets.
Adam Chen said the government needed to give clearer guidance on how to handle a surge in infections. The Chinese health system will be tested.
The projection of power from the outside is very similar to the Chinese sense of besiegement in a world order led by the US. Until that happens, though, the Chinese strong man’s instincts and demand for total control at home seem to have meant the erection of higher barriers in the real world and cyberspace to keep outsiders out.
The local child made a statement on the Great Wall. But the true danger of the “blame the foreigners” sentiment comes when adults in powerful positions take advantage of it in the face of mounting pressure on the domestic front.
The relationship with the West has turned into a confrontation with the United States and its allies due toChina’s growing economic and military power. Chinese diplomats have changed their ways and are now trained to shoot anyone who dares to question their government.
The emperors of those dynasties, who also rebuilt parts of the Great Wall, failed to reverse their country’s decline back then. But the tools at their disposal were no match to the high-tech ones in the hands of China’s current ruler. The ultimate goal of the Chinese nation is being realized by the construction of the wall, and it seems that the leader of the nation is very confident in his ability to realize it.
The Communist Party sent top officials to deal with the political crisis that erupted after Wuhan mishandled the first coronaviruses outbreak. One of them, Sun Chunlan, stayed for three months, rallying local cadres and sourcing protective gear for health workers and hospital beds for patients.
Ms. Sun warned deserters that they would be put in the hole of historical shame if they deviated from the war against the virus.
What makes you feel like you won’t be there? A viral editorial by Hanzhang Liu on the importance of putting people first
As the rare woman in the upper echelons of Chinese politics, it is a role to which she has become accustomed, driving the Communist Party’s will and bearing the country’s criticism. “Women most of the time get pushed to the frontline when male politicians don’t want to deal with a crisis,” said Hanzhang Liu, assistant professor of politics at Pitzer College.
China has an advanced online shopping, dining and travel system powered by mobile phone superapps and ubiquitousQR codes. Now, those technologies play a role in constraining daily life.
Across the country, basic activities like going to the grocery store, riding public transport, or entering an office building depend on holding an up-to-date, negative Covid test and not being flagged as a close contact of a patient – data points reflected by a color code.
Going out in public can be a risk in itself, as being placed under quarantine or barricaded by authorities into a mall or office building as part of a snap lockdown could simply depend on whether someone in the general vicinity ends up testing positive.
“(You see) all the flaws of big data when it has control over your daily life,” said one Shanghai resident surnamed Li, who spent a recent afternoon scrambling to prove he didn’t need to quarantine after a tracking system pinned his wife to a location near to where a positive case had been detected.
Li said he and his wife were able to get in touch with a hotline and explain their situation, which resulted in her health code returning to green.
“The essence of persisting with dynamic zero-Covid is putting people first and prioritizing life,” read a recent editorial in the People’s Daily – one of three along similar lines released by the party mouthpiece last week in an apparent bid to lower public expectation about any policy changes ahead of the Party Congress.
“What makes you think that you won’t be on that late-night bus one day?” read a viral comment, which garnered more than 250,000 likes before it was censored – one of a number of glimpses into rising frustration with the cost of the policy.
A rare political protest took place in Beijing a week ago, when banners were hung from a bridge on the Third Ring Road.
The Communist Party’s new “dynamic zero COVID” policy comes from a combination of the Great Leap Forward, Communist witch hunts, and the Cultural Revolution
The impact of those controls is becoming sharper, as lockdowns – which have repeatedly left people struggling for access to food and medicine and grappling with lost income and a mental toll – have become more frequent.
As local authorities tried to contain an outbreak that was close to the major political event, the pre-party congress controls were put in place.
Ben Cowling of the University of Hong Kong’s School of Public Health said it’s more expensive to maintain the zero-covid strategy because the latest strains are transmissible more frequently.
The Chinese government has relied on public health experts to relay the message that there is nothing to worry about in the event of a large wave of infections as a result of the H1N1 virus.
China has a low immunization rate among its elderly and there is fears that this could cause problems with the country’s health system. Almost one-third of elderly people have had two shots, and less than one-fifth have received a booster shot.
“The vaccines take time, the ICU expansion takes time – and if you don’t see effort to prepare for the change, that implies that they are not planning to change the policy any time soon,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
Already the health code system has been used to diffuse social protest – with petitioners who lost their savings in rural banks barred from protesting after their health codes inexplicably turned red.
There was the Great Leap Forward, the industrial reform campaign begun in 1958 that precipitated a devastating famine; the political witch hunts of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, which nearly tore China apart; and many more, some more damaging than others, and each targeting some political, social or economic imperative of the day. Their cumulative effect is one of the Communist Party’s greatest achievements: a near-perfect symbiosis between dictatorial government and subservient population.
China on Friday said it would adjust its monitoring and control regime and simplify the travel rules in order to ease the “dynamic zero COVID” policy.
The Communist Party’s top decision-making body decided at a meeting on Friday that the new measures would be announced later that day.
The rise of domestically transmitted Covid-19 cases in China: easing a strict zero-COVID ban, a response to investor jittery
The zero-tolerance approach has drawn public backlash due to its heavy economic and social costs.
The easing of the measures will see authorities scrap the so-called “circuit breaker” mechanism, under which China-bound flights were suspended if an airline was found to carry a certain number of passengers who tested positive for Covid upon landing.
Inbound international passengers will also see their pre-departure test requirement reduced from two to one, and their mandatory centralized quarantine upon arrival cut from seven days to five days, followed by another three days of home isolation.
Markets responded positively to the changes as Covid-19 restrictions have kept international investors jittery. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index shot up 7% just after the noon break local time, while mainland China’s benchmark Shanghai Composite Index rose 2.5%.
Under the new guidelines, people who are identified as close contacts of Covid-19 cases will be kept out of public places for five days and 3 days at home.
The Chinese government issued new guidelines easing some of its strict zero-COVID policies on Wednesday. People who have no symptoms and have not had any contact with anyone who has the disease are allowed to stay at their homes, instead of being forced to go to central facilities. The changes may lead to a rise in hospital infections.
On Thursday the government reported 10,535 new domestically transmitted cases, the highest number of cases in a single day in several months.
The epidemic is expected to expand in scope and scale due to the winter and spring weather, according to the National Health Commission.
Exploring social media for zero-cov est: When a teenage boy in Lanzhou jumps to his death after escaping from a locked down apartment
Students in many Chinese cities are going back to learning from their laptops. My daughter’s kindergarten closed because of restrictions related to Covid 19 and she is not in school again for two weeks. At this point, she has spent more time at home in 2022 than in the classroom.
Restrictions at a moment’s notice have made it nearly impossible to plan more than 20 minutes ahead of time. It is bad for business but also affects ordinary people’s ability to go about their lives, even if they can get locked down in their apartment or workplace.
Some friends who have suffered through an attack or other event have taken a backpack full of their items with them, in case they need to escape from a local pub.
One note on a residential building in Beijing shows the problem of employees not being able to come to work due to the severe epidemic situation in recent days.
You would presume that traveling from a city with a well-publicized disease outbreak would be enough to warrant immediate notice of self-isolation upon debarking the plane. Alas, not.
But here’s the real kicker: While I needed to stay home for four days, my wife and daughter, who live with me, were allowed to leave the apartment and wander around the city at will. I would imagine that a policy to protect people’s health to the greatest extent possible would allow for such a huge risk to public health.
A nationwide survey done in 2020 showed that more than 30% of the respondents had dealt with psychological distress because of the swine flu.
The 55 year old woman, who was suffering from an anxiety disorder, jumped to her death from the locked down apartment building.
A three-year-old boy died following a gas leak at a locked down house in the western city of Lanzhou. On social media, the boy’s father alleged that he tried to alert local health workers to call an ambulance but was denied prompt access to emergency services due to his Covid-19 testing status.
There is no shortage of supporters for zero-cov est on Chinese social media, but there are others who do not approve.
Following the young boy’s death in Lanzhou, the internet rage machine was running at full capacity, with related hashtags on Weibo racking up hundreds of millions of views.
Anger was primarily directed at the government’s censorship of posts related to the incident and “excessive Covid-19 prevention measures.” The videos show city dwellers taking to the streets in a rare show of resistance, shouting against what appears to be police and public health workers.
He doesn’t expect changes to the zero-covid policy in the short term. The local governments have not changed their incentive structure. They are held responsible for the situation in their jurisdiction.
In defiance of strict local orders, the residents under Covid lockdown in Guangzhou are taking to the streets to defy barriers that were meant to confine them to their homes, according to video and images circulating on social media.
Some of the images show large crowds cheering and surging across toppled barriers and filling streets after dark in the city’s Haizhu district, which has been under an increasingly restrictive lockdown since November 5, as the epicenter of the city’s ongoing Covid outbreak.
The clang of metal barriers falling across the neighborhood mingles with cheers in the video and is filmed on the streets of the city.
Beijing’s response to the Beijing protests: “What can we learn from a few years of mass testing?” “It’s a lot of work, but it’s not so hard for the poor,” says Zhang Yi
A level of public dissent not seen in decades has arisen as a result of the Beijing protests and other protests around the country. The party responded with a large show of force, which resulted in many people being arrested at the protests or in the days following.
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.
The measures should be balanced with social and economic interests, as pledged by the top officials in Beijing. Authorities last week revised the policy, including discouraging unnecessary mass testing and overly zealous classification of restricted “high risk” areas.
They also largely scrapped the quarantining of secondary close contacts and reduced the time close contacts must spend in central quarantine – all changes officials insist are not a relaxation but a refinement of the policy.
China was prepared to return to the world stage in a few weeks, with President XI going to Southeast Asia for a week of diplomacy and meeting key Western leaders in person for the first time since the start of the Pandemic.
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. For people who work in factories or construction sites, remote work is not an option.
Observers noted hearing residents from outside Guangzhou appeal for help from officials, such as compensation for rent and free supplies.
A man is yelling that the people of Hubei want to eat in a video that’s on social media. The people of the Hubei area want to be free. referring to another province in China, where many migrant workers in the district come from. There are workers in hazmat suits in the crowd that he is in.
In a clip from the same scene, a man tells the workers how they would feel if their parents were sick. If you’re told your children can’t leave the hospital because they are sick, what do you think?
In one of the videos people are yelling out their frustration to a man who they say wants to address their concerns. One resident rushes forward and says that they were left to queue for hours for Covid-19 testing, and the meat sold by the government went bad, while they could not get through to local support hotlines.
“Nobody came to explain and the community’s office line is always busy. If we die, our landlord doesn’t care. What should we do?” the resident says, while the other members of the crowd start to shout together: “Unseal! Un seal!
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/15/china/china-covid-guangzhou-protests-intl-hnk/index.html
A Chinese zero-covid discontent reopening mic-intl-hnk official described his frustrations at the death of his dad
In the city news conference Monday, a Haizhu district official acknowledged criticisms that restrictions could have been announced earlier and with more clarity on areas affected by the measures.
On the afternoon of November 1, Zhou last saw his dad alive in a video chat, after his home on the far outskirts of Beijing was locked down.
The apartment building where Zhou and his family lived did not have any cases, and they didn’t even realize that the Covid restrictions had been imposed.
Zhou broke down in tears when he said his dad was killed by the local government. He said he’s received no explanation about why the ambulance took so long to arrive, just a death certificate stating the wrong date of death.
Zhou contacted several state media in Beijing to report his story, but no reporters showed up. Amid growing desperation and anger, he turned to foreign media – despite knowing the risk of repercussions from the government. CNN is only using his last name to make sure that risk is mitigated.
In central China, workers at the world’s biggest iPhone assembly factory clashed with security officers over delays in bonus payment and chaotic Covid rules.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/25/china/china-zero-covid-discontent-reopening-mic-intl-hnk/index.html
Resilient online classes after a protest in Chongqing: a model of social and economic tolls for China’s public opinion
On Thursday, a resident in the city of Chongqing gave a speech about the Covid lock down on his house. Without freedom, I would rather 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 are not allowed to watch the World Cup in their home country, and so these acts of defiance were a response to an online outcry.
There are indications that Chinese officials feel the heat of public discontent, which has come on top of heavy social and economic tolls.
Instead of relaxing controls, many officials are trying to stamp out infections as soon as possible.
The city of Shijiazhuang was the first to stop mass testing. It also allowed students to return to schools after a long period of online classes. Over the weekend, there was a rise in cases that prompted authorities to impose a lock down on Monday.
Anyone new to the city can’t enter several places for five days, including malls, restaurants, and supermarkets. In half of the city, there were cultural and entertainment venues shut down.
In Guangzhou, officials have locked down Baiyun district for a fifth time after the protest took place.
In Beijing, the largest district of the city, streets are mostly empty as businesses are ordered to shut down and residents are urged to stay home. Several districts moved to online classes this week.
Changing lives in China: Why do we need them now? “The most important thing to change is that we don’t need it,” says Echo Ding
Chinese officials have always denied that the 20 measures listed in the guidelines were intended to pivot from living with the illness to living without it.
He does not want this to happen in China or anywhere in the world. I lost my dad. 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.
The changes were greeted with relief by many and sparked discussion online of freer travel within the country, but there was a sense of uncertainty about what might happen in the future.
“The world changed overnight, and that’s really amazing,” said Echo Ding, 30, a manager at a tech company in Beijing. “I feel like we are getting back to normal life. It’s important to me because if I don’t get back to normal life, I might lose my mind.
How can it change so quickly? “You want to?” Ding asked. It makes mefeel that we are fools. It is up to them. I feel like they have said it is good and then it is good, that is how I feel right now. I have no choice other than to see it. All I can do is follow the arrangement.
Changes were welcomed, but there was also a feeling of disbelief in the city, which was locked down for over two months earlier this year.
He said that he was happy about the new changes, but his friends were showing typical signs of post traumatic stress disorder.
Covid-19 spread in China prompted a critical review of Beijing’s policy release earlier in the month of March 22: When China broke its grip on the disease
The officials in Beijing said the changes to the rules were based on scientific evidence, including the spread of the milder Omicron variant, the vaccination rate, and China’s experience in responding to the virus.
Last Wednesday, top health officials made a sweeping rollback of the mass testing, centralized quarantine, and health code tracking rules that it had relied on to control viral spread. Home isolation of cases as well as health code use in designated areas remain, as do certain aspects of those measures.
The government and state media used the risks associated with the virus to justify the maintaining of restrictive policies.
A small amount of serious cases would have a significant impact on the health system in a country of more than one billion people.
There were lots of reports of panic buying of fever medication on Weibo on Thursday morning, as topics about what to do if infections by Omicron trended high.
“People were not told what kind of medicine they should have and what they should do if infected until there was widespread infection. The policy release felt abrupt and arbitrary, said Sam Wang, 26, a lawyer in Beijing, who added that it should have been done a long, long time ago.
Bob Li, a graduate student in Beijing, who tested positive for the virus on Friday said he wasn’t afraid of the virus, but his mother, who lives in the countryside, stayed up all night worrying about him. Li said that she found the virus a very scary thing.
People living in cosmopolitan urban areas are more likely to support reopening the country due to fear about the impact of Covid-19 within China.
The Implications of the Covid-19 Reopening for Urban Health and Public-Health in the Emerging Pandemic Condensate
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.
As local authorities adjust to the guidelines, some are watching to see how they are implemented 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.
Hao, in Beijing, said on Wednesday evening that her health code had turned yellow – which would usually bar her from entering most public places, until she queued up for another test that returned a negative result. She kept her home to wait and see what the new rules were like, and she could largely go out freely.
The move follows the government’s snap announcement last week that it was ending many of the most draconian measures. Three years of lockdowns, travel restrictions, and testing on those moving between provinces and cities have left many people wondering if they are healthy.
The government doesn’t have a clear goal of its new policy which could cause confusion. “These measures will very likely lead to a messy and hasty transition process where local governments ditch all the zero-COVID measures without investing seriously in preparing for the transition,” says Huang, who would have liked to have seen the reopening happen in phases.
The new rules are open to interpretation by the local governments, including when and where to test people in an outbreak, and how to manage high-risk areas.
Many people in China live in densely populated high-rise buildings, where it will be difficult to limit transmission. Allowing people to quarantine at home will contribute to viral spread, says George Liu, a public-health researcher at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. This could overwhelm hospitals.
Researchers say the timing of the reopening isn’t ideal. Winter is peak influenza season so hospitals will already be experiencing a rise in the number of patients. And many people will also be travelling across the country for next month’s Lunar New Year and spring festival, further increasing viral spread, says Xi Chen, an economist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, who studies China’s public-health system.
People in China go to the hospital for mild illnesses because there is not a strong system of primary medical care, according to Xi Chen, who hopes that more information will emerge about how the government plans to prioritize care.
Joy Zhang, a sociologist at the University of Kent in Britain, says there is more that can be done to alleviate the social stigma associated with COVID-19. “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.
The Beijing Emergency Center in the wake of a Covid-19 epidemic: How can the population cope with the crisis? A report by Liu
There is “serious vaccine hesitancy”, among older people, and a general lack of trust in medical professionals, says Liu. It will take time to vaccinate older people since they live in rural and remote areas.
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.
Changes continued Monday as authorities announced a deactivation of the “mobile itinerary card” health tracking function planned for 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.
But as the scrapping of parts of the zero-Covid infrastructure come apace, there are questions about how the country’s health system will handle a mass outbreak.
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.
A hospital official on Saturday appealed to residents who have mild or no symptoms to stay away from the city’s emergency services line, after a surge in calls from people with Covid-positive symptoms.
The Beijing Emergency Center had received more than 30,000 emergency calls in the past several days, up from the 5000 calls they normally receive, according to official media.
Covid was “spreading rapidly” driven by highly transmissible Omicron variants in China, a top Covid-19 expert, Zhong Nanshan, said in an interview published by state media Saturday.
Even though the prevention and control are strong, it will not be easy to completely cut off the transmission chain, as was said by the public voice since the earliest days of the H1N1 epidemic.
The rapid rollback of testing nationwide and the shift by many people to use antigen tests at home has also made it difficult to gauge the extent of the spread, with official data now appearing meaningless.
Emerging new trends in Covid-19: China is not prepared to take into account the expected surge of protests, costs, and public opinion
China may not be prepared to handle the expected surge of cases due to protests against the policy and rising economic costs, warned outside experts.
The government should first and foremost focus on booster shots for the elderly, especially with China’s lunar new year coming up next month, and a peak travel time when urban residents visit elderly relatives.
Increasing the number of intensive care units and beds will be among the measures to be undertaken by the China’s National Health Commission.
Meanwhile, experts have warned a lack of experience with the virus – and years of state media coverage focusing on its dangers and impact overseas, before a recent shift in tone – could push those who are not in critical need to seek medical care, further overwhelming systems.
China’s market watchdog said on Friday that there was a “temporary shortage” of some “hot-selling” drugs and vowed to crackdown on price gouging, while major online retailer JD.com last week said it was taking steps to ensure stable supplies after sales for certain medications surged 18 times that week over the same period in October.
A doctor in Beijing said in an interview that people who test positive for Covid-19 but do not show any symptoms should not take any medication to recover.
“People with asymptomatic inflections do not need medication at all. It is enough to rest at home, maintain a good mood and physical condition ,” Li Tongzeng, chief infectious disease physician at Beijing You An Hospital, said in an interview linked to a hashtag viewed more than 370 million times since Friday.
China will no longer require travel tracing as part of an uncertain exit from its strict “zero-COVID” policies that have elicited widespread discontent.
In Beijing and a number of other cities, protests over the restrictions grew into a call for the leader of the Communist Party to step down in a level of public political expression unseen in decades.
The recent Chinese ill-equipped economy of fall 2009 and the effect on China’s economy from the birth of the first pandemic influenza
While met with relief, the relaxation has also sparked concerns about a new wave of infections potentially overwhelming health care resources in some areas.
At the same time, the government reversed course by allowing those with mild symptoms to recuperate at home rather than being sent to field hospitals that have become notorious for overcrowding and poor hygiene.
Reports on the Chinese internet states that restrictions will stay in effect, but that economic activity will soon be back to pre-pandemic levels.
China’s total was more than double that of October 1 as 2, 249 confirmed infections were reported on Wednesday. It has recorded 5,235 deaths — compared with 1.1 million in the United States.
Xi’s government promised to reduce the cost and disruption after the economy shrank by 2.6% from the previous quarter in the three months ending in June. The economy is expected to shrink in the current quarter. In November, imports fell by a factor of 10.9% from a year ago.
There is a chance that the ruling party might reverse its actions if there is a large-scale outbreak.
Last week’s announcement allowed considerable room for local governments to assign their own regulations. Most restaurants in Beijing still require a negative test result over the course of a couple of days, and even more so for government offices.
That’s the way the world got off of Covid-19, or: The bad news for a teacher friend in Guangzhou, China
He is the editor-in-chief of That’s, the China lifestyle magazine. He has lived in Guangzhou, China since 2018. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. He can be followed on the micro-blogging site, @LarsHamer1. CNN has an opinion on it.
Residents here dread the knock. A loud noise coming from the door of my apartment in Guangzhou, China, early Tuesday morning. Instantly, fear washed over me; health care workers in hazmat suits were ordering everyone to go downstairs because a neighbor had tested positive for Covid-19.
There was good reason to worry. A month ago, a teacher friend of mine and his colleagues were sent to centralized quarge after one of his students tested positive for Covid-19. I feared the same was about to happen to me.
To my surprise, nothing of the sort. I didn’t do well on the Covid-19 test. I was free to leave my house and go about my day before my result came out.
If this had happened weeks before, I would have been considered a close contact and therefore powerless to escape the facility that was a vice-like grip.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/opinions/china-covid-restrictions-lifted-guangzhou-hamer/index.html
Changed city of Guangzhou: from a ghost town to a metropolis after a COVID-19 lockdown five years ago
Almost overnight, Guangzhou, a city of some 15 million people, has been transformed from a Covid-19 ghost town back to the bustling metropolis I first encountered when I moved here 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 no longer needed.
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.
I spent most days working until late in the night because non-essential businesses closed, and millions of people were confined to homes. I too started to feel the strain and decided to leave the country.
It was a moment of utter disbelief. Guangzhou had almost 8,000 cases that day, numbers similar to those that triggered a city-wide lockdown in Shanghai in April.
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.
Students in universities in Shanghai and nearby cities can choose to stay at campus or return home early if they want to, as part of the school’s test preparation program. China’s busiest travel season occurs in the month of January during the lunar new year.
In the last three years, universities have experienced a lot of frequent lock-ups, often leading to fights between authorities and students in their dorm rooms.
Beijing’s National Health Commission stepped down Wednesday after announcing a sharp drop of COVID-19 testing in response to high-profile protests
After three years of enforced some of the world’s strictest virus restrictions the government unexpectedly announced last week that they were ending many of the strictest measures.
The government took a further step Tuesday, removing restrictions for arriving travelers that prevented them from eating in restaurants or going to bars for the first three days. The contact-tracing app will be scrapped, and vaccine requirements for restaurants will not be changed. The new measures take effect Wednesday.
It is hard to know the extent of the spread of the virus due to the rapid shift from required testing to self testing at home. Complicating matters is the fact that many restrictions and rules around returning to work diverge at the local level.
China’s government-supplied figures have not been independently verified and questions have been raised about whether the ruling Communist Party has sought to minimize numbers of cases and deaths.
Emergency services have been offered by the US embassies in the northeastern Chinese city of Heilongjiang and the central city of Wuhan for the last two days.
The email said that Mission China was dedicated to make sure full consular services were available to US citizens living in the People’s Republic of China.
The change in policy comes after protests erupted Nov. 25 after 10 people died in a fire in the northwestern city of Urumqi. Some people wondered if the restrictions impeded rescue efforts. Authorities denied the claims spread online, but demonstrators gave voice to longstanding frustration in cities such as Shanghai that have endured severe lockdowns.
BEIJING (AP) — China’s National Health Commission scaled down its daily COVID-19 report starting Wednesday in response to a sharp decline in PCR testing since the government eased anti-virus measures after daily cases hit record highs.
A notice on the commission’s website said it stopped publishing daily figures on numbers of COVID-19 cases where no symptoms are detected since it was “impossible to accurately grasp the actual number of asymptomatic infected persons,” which have generally accounted for the vast majority of new infections. The only numbers they’re reporting are confirmed cases detected in public testing facilities.
Beijing’s streets have grown eerily quiet, with lines forming outside fever clinics — the number of which has been increased from 94 to 303 — and at pharmacies, where cold and flu medications are harder to find.
Two Beijing clinics that were supposed to provide shots for elderly people were empty except for medical personnel. Despite fears of a major outbreak, there was little evidence of a surge in patient numbers.
At the China-Japan Friendship Hospital’s fever clinic in Beijing, a dozen people waited for nucleic acid test results. Patients were checked by nurses in full-body protective gear.
A few kilometers (miles) south, at Chaoyang Hospital, about a dozen people waited in a line of blue tents, deflecting winds amid subzero temperatures. A person in the queue took out a bottle of Disinfectant and sprayed her as she waited.
Across the street at Gaoji Baikang Pharmacy, around a dozen people waited in line for cough medication and Chinese herbal remedies. “We are doing all we can to stock up on your health care needs,” the sign said at the front. A man coming out of the store bought two packages of the Chinese herbal remedy, but told his customers they wouldn’t be able to buy more than that.
Hospitals have also reportedly been struggling to remain staffed, while packages were piling up at distribution points because of a shortage of China’s ubiquitous motorized tricycle delivery drivers.
Emerging Chinese Memetic Boards: Exposure of a Surge of Infectives in the United States and Other Local Health Systems
Chinese people with access to the global internet through a virtual private network enjoy more popularity than people in other parts of the world. The meme boards depicting the lives of study-abroad Chinese students emerged as the number of Chinese users grew. The founder’s personal meme accounts became radicalized along with their followers. There are two types of pages: meme pages and nostalgic mood boards.
The professors at the University of Hong Kong predicted that if a reopening happened, it could lead to hundreds of deaths per million people.
The surge of infections would “likely overload many local health systems across the country,” said the research paper, released last week on the Medrxiv preprint server and which has yet to undergo peer review.
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.
The funeral home employee told CNN the customers would need to wait until at least the next day to cremate their loved ones since they were swamped by the long queue for cremation.
The major cities are facing an increase in infections. In the financial hub of Shanghai, schools have moved most classes online starting 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.
Asymptomatic and mildly ill workers can “go to work normally after taking protective measures as necessary for their health status and job requirements,” said the Chongqing and Wuhu authorities in similar statements posted on their municipal government websites.
The Chinese CDC warns that the worst is yet to come: A public health expert’s outburst after the Liang-Zhong catastrophe predicted for January 21
Chinese experts have warned that the worst is yet to come. The first of three waves of infections this winter is hitting the country, according to the chief epidemiologist at the Chinese CDC.
The current wave will run until mid- January according to the speaker. The second wave is expected to last from late January to mid-February next year, triggered by the mass travel ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, which falls on January 21.
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.
If Liang was changing focus, another public health expert made a series of false claims about the illness. He went from touting China’s mass quarantine strategy in May to telling a state media outlet that he hasn’t seen cases of COVID-19 causing obvious long-term organ damage.
Zhong also said that 78% of patients infected with the Omnicron variant won’t be reinfected for quite a long time. Studies suggest protection against reinfection declines dramatically over time and most people will be reinfected every one to two years.
The about-face was not noticed by the Chinese internet. Posts juxtaposing several experts’ TV appearances before and after state policy changes have gotten over 100,000 views.
The member of the commission famed for insisting that Shanghai wouldn’t be shut down has been receiving online apologies.
Comments on “Can Chinese medicine eradicate its zero COVID infection?” by Dr. Zhong on “What to do after a policy change and what to do about it”
There’s a lot of online discussion about what to do after a policy change, including preventative measures and treatments.
Untested remedies to fight COVID have again flourished in recent days. An internal medicine doctor who’s a member of China’s prestigious Academy of Engineering recommended the unproven method of rinsing out your mouth using iced salt water daily. The commenters were confused. Was the salt water rinse discredited two years ago? Does an iced version make a difference?” A person wrote in a post.
A local government in southwest China suggested making tea out of orange peels and monk fruit – both common ingredients in traditional Chinese medicine – to prevent infection. Dr. Zhong said weeks ago that he hasn’t found any medication that is effective at preventing a COVID infection.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/20/1143413739/confusion-and-falsehoods-spread-as-china-reverses-its-zero-covid-policy
COVID is Flying in the Dark: What Scientists Tell Us About the Phenomenology of the Global Times, Social Media, and Social Media
The uncertainty and chaos reminds Chen Wenhong, who is an associate professor of media studies and sociology at University of Texas, of early 2020 when COVID began to spread. “It’s kind of flying in the dark.”
The most trustworthy sources of information for China’s citizens are state media and health professionals. A senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York says there are few alternatives to state media and social media with access to the global internet cut off.
A recent example was how a Communist Party-controlled paper, The Global Times, used a false report in the Daily Mail to suggest that Moderna manufactured the vaccine. The Global Times extensively cited the coverage, using it to attack other unsupported theories about the virus’s origin, one of which suggested that it had been leaked from a government research lab. Other smaller social media accounts made videos of the report, putting “British Media” in the headlines.
She points out that while researchers and journalists often pay attention to social media discourse, many rural, often elderly residents rely on television and family members in larger cities to stay informed. Many are vulnerable to the disease, live in places where healthcare resources are scarce, and aren’t adept at finding information on social media.
With the disease rapidly cascading from large cities to towns and villages, the Chinese government needs to act fast to get medically-sound public health messages out to the most vulnerable people, says Chen.
As NPR reported, public health authorities don’t base their messages for the public entirely on science – many considerations are also pragmatic and culturally-based.
Chen says that scientists will have some soul searching in the next few years. How do we conduct ourselves when we know that politics will have a role in public health and science? What [are] our ethics?”
Return to work after the Omicron outbreak: The province of Zhejiang and the country’s top leaders say the government is working hard
In the past month, directives have been issued to public sector employees by the city of Wuhu, Chongqing and Guiyang, all of which are large enough to house 100 million people.
Zhejiang provincial and health leaders gave similar instructions at a news conference Sunday, with one official suggesting key teams consider a rotation schedule “to ensure uninterrupted work and maintain order when outbreaks are severe.” State media said that the town of Guiying followed suit.
The push to return to work comes as China relaxes rules around testing, quarantine and other pandemic policies, in a dramatic step away from its costly zero-Covid policy.
There have been a series of outbreaks and lockdowns that have coincided with a record number of young people being out of a job, disruptions to supply chains and a cratering of the real estate sector.
“A few months ago if you went out like this, you would be sentenced,” one person commented on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, under the back-to-work announcement.
Bonnie Wang, a fintech worker in Zhejiang’s industrial hub of Ningbo, told CNN that a colleague with Covid symptoms continued to work in the office this week with a fever.
The local government had a get-out-of-jail-free card during the Pandemic, according to the founder of a Hong Kong company.
The Chinese media and experts have downplayed the severity of Omicron but instead focused on the importance of economic recovery, which is reflected in the government messaging.
Top leaders at the Central Economic Work Conference, a key annual meeting that ended Friday, said in a statement that stabilizing economic growth was the top priority for 2023. They also signaled that policymakers would relax their grip on the country’s private sector — a departure from the regulatory crackdown that in recent years has thrown China’s biggest private companies into chaos.
And though the economy has been struggling for several years, Manuel said China’s leaders may now feel more secure in adjusting their policy after the closely-watched Communist Party Congress in October.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/21/business/china-covid-return-to-work-intl-hnk-mic/index.html
The Beijing subway cutdown comes at a time when the economy is back in the grind: A cynical comment on Weibo
But this push for economic growth comes at a cost, one already making itself clear as cases skyrocket across the country, with widespread medicine shortages and reports of crematoriums struggling to keep up.
What is the first thing the company sent him? He had a laptop that was his work laptop. She said that she sympathizes most with the workers but that she understood the need for business to continue.
The Beijing subway saw only 2.21 million passengers on Monday, down more than half a million from the average weekday commuters in October and December. Similar drops were reported in other major cities, including Shanghai and Guangzhou.
“I feel that the local government that introduced this policy is extremely irresponsible,” read a top post on Weibo, where a related hashtag was viewed more than 240 million times on Tuesday. Many people with elderly relatives and children at home have symptoms of illness.
Some took a more cynical tone, criticizing the decision as prioritizing the economy at the expense of workers’ wellbeing, and demanding that their superiors be held to the same expectation.