Why do Chinese expats live and work in China? Reliving the Covid-19 pandemic with my daughter, Evelyn, as a student in Yunnan
Editor’s Note: Matthew Bossons (@MattBossons) is managing editor of the Shanghai-based online publication Radii. He has lived in China since 2014. The views he expresses are his own. CNN has more opinion on it.
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.
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.
In China’s far west region of Xinjiang, officials imposed a near-total lockdown and made a rare admission of failure in their handling of a Covid outbreak. The authorities in the north vowed to cut the spread of the virus. And in a popular travel destination in Yunnan, in China’s south, the government canceled flights, trapping crowds of angry tourists at an airport.
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.
The memories flooded back after the post was posted. I pondered how the local commuters would treat me on the bus to work the following Monday, but the bigger concern was how my five-year-old daughter would be treated in her local kindergarten. (We had moved from Guangzhou to Beijing in July 2020, and from Beijing to Shanghai in July 2021).
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.
The worst fears were confirmed the following Monday when Evelyn returned from school and told her mom she wanted to look Chinese. Visibly upset, she said that some of her classmates had taunted her with calls of “waigouren,” meaning ‘foreigner’ in Mandarin Chinese.
Evelyn was just three years old when Guangzhou began to discriminate and she was not yet attending school in the spring of 2020. This time around, however, she is much more vulnerable to health-related hysteria.
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.” This approach in combination with long border closing and tensions provides fertile ground for swastikas.
China is bracing for an unprecedented wave of Covid-19 cases as it dismantles large parts of its repressive zero-Covid policy, with a leading expert warning Omicron variants were “spreading rapidly” and signs of an outbreak rattling the country’s capital.
She shouted abuse at the hazmat-suited workers below as she fought back tears in a video that has recently gone viral on Weibo and appears to show the growing frustration of the Chinese public with the government.
The woman has been under quarantine for half a year since returning from university in the summer, she shouts at the workers. They stare back, seemingly unmoved.
China’s zero-Covid lockdown protest has been removed from weibo and WeChat a day after CNN discovered 47 cases
China is the last major economy to adhere to a zero-Covid policy, using snap lockdowns, mass testing, extensive contact-tracing and quarantines to stamp out infections as soon as they emerge.
Observers 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 and a collapsing housing market.
Public frustration – the true scale of which is difficult to gauge – appears to be rising over lockdowns that can shutter people in their homes for weeks on end with fleeting advance notice, digital health codes that dictate where people can move, and the constant threat of being sent to centralized quarantine. Meanwhile, the country’s economy is faltering, with both the IMF and World Bank recently downgrading China’s GDP growth forecasts, citing zero-Covid as one of the major drags.
The site of the protest was immediately removed from search results by Weibo. Before long, key words including “Beijing,” “Haidian,” “warrior,” “brave man,” and even “courage” were restricted from search.
Numerous accounts on Weibo and WeChat, the super-app essential for daily life in China, have been banned after commenting on – or alluding to – the protest.
Many people spoke out to show their support. Some shared a Chinese pop hit titled “Lonely Warrior” in reference to the protester who some called a “hero,” while others posted under the#: “I saw it.”
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.
Last month, CNN counted more than 70 Chinese cities placed under full or partial Covid lockdowns in a period of a couple weeks, impacting more than 300 million people.
The city reported 47 Covid-19 cases on Thursday, a day after authorities in six districts ordered the closing of entertainment venues such as bars and internet cafes. The Disney resort in China has suspended some of its attractions since Sunday.
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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.
The panic buying got worse when it was announced that the water authorities in Singapore had begun to ensure water quality after finding a lake in the middle of the ocean.
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.
More than 240,000 university students have been locked out of their campuses in Inner Mongolia according to a deputy director of the Department of Education. There was an outbreak on campus which resulted in the firing of a university Communist Party boss after 39 students from his institution tested positive.
There are 22 million people who have been banned from leaving the western part of the region and required to stay. Xinjiang recorded 403 new cases on Thursday, according to an official tally.
Yet amid it all, Beijing appears unwilling to move from its hardline stance. commentaries were published by the People’s Daily this week repeating that China would not let its guard down.
The battle against Covid was winnable, it said. Other countries that had reopened and eased restrictions had done so because they had no choice, it said, as they had failed to “effectively control the epidemic in a timely manner.”
The Rise and Fall of China: Three Years After the Decline of the Great Wall: The Unusual Story of the Covid Epidemic
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. 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’s get away from them…” The adults were quiet as the group accelerated their pace.
Understanding the big picture is timely as Xi is poised to break convention to assume a third term as the head of the Chinese Communist Party – the real source of his power instead of the ceremonial presidency – at the ruling party’s twice-a-decade national congress, which opened in Beijing on Sunday.
The Great Wall, a top tourist attraction that normally draws throngs of visitors during holidays, stood nearly empty when we went thanks to Xi’s insistence – three years into the global pandemic – on a policy of zero tolerance for Covid infections while the rest of the world has mostly moved on and re-opened.
Most international travelers have not been allowed into China since March 2020, and many foreigners have left the country.
With the highly contagious Omicron variant raging through parts of the country, authorities had discouraged domestic travel ahead of National Day holiday. They are also sticking to a playbook of strict quarantine, incessant mass testing and invasive contact tracing – often locking down entire cities of millions over a handful of cases.
Tourism spending plummeted in the last year of the normal season, while holiday travel plummeted during the so-called Golden Week.
The Great Wall as a Tool for Preventing Social Insecurity in the China: An Empirical Analysis of Cosmic Microwave Background Analyses
The leader of the great country is killing it, said a hardware executive in Shenzhen. “But you can’t do anything about it. It pains and depresses me.”
The smart phone app will stop functioning at midnight on Monday, which could mean residents won’t be tracked or recorded during their travels, meaning they might not have to stay in a town for a while because of the swine flu. China’s ruling Communist Party allows no independent parties to conduct verification and such apps have been used in past to suppress travel and free speech. It’s part of a package of apps that includes the health code, which has yet to be disabled.
The authorities are taking more risks after the weekend of angry street protests against Beijing’s hardline pandemic control policy. The authorities on Wednesday announced fresh steps to roll back some of the policy’s strict elements.
The country has one of the most extensive internet filters and censorship systems in the world. Posts seen as being contrary to the party line are scrubbed quickly, including on Covid.
The local child’s remarks on the Great Wall reflected that. 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.
Underpinned by rising nationalism, China has started flexing military muscle beyond its shores. Taiwan has always been a point of contention between the communists and the democrats in Asia, but reunification with the self-governed democratic island is seen by the Communists as the crown jewel of their legacy.
The emperors of those dynasties did not reverse their country’s decline when they rebuilt parts of the Great Wall. But the tools at their disposal were no match to the high-tech ones in the hands of China’s current ruler. The Chinese leader seems to believe his wall will assist him in his goal of rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
HONG KONG — As anger simmered in Wuhan over the mishandling of the first coronavirus outbreak in early 2020, the Communist Party sent top officials to deal with the growing political crisis. 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 that any deserters would be put through the wringer of historical shame.
The challenges of zero-Covid in China as a political leader confronting the cost of the Social Security Law in the 21st Century
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’s advanced online ecosystem – run on mobile phone superapps and ubiquitous QR codes – has offered arguably unrivaled convenience for consumers to shop, dine and travel. 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, who had been with his wife at the time, said he was able to reach a hotline and explain their situation, returning her health code 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.
A post that got more than 250,000 likes before it was taken down was one of many examples of growing impatience with the cost of the policy.
Last week, a rare political protest in Beijing saw banners hung from a bridge along the capital’s busy Third Ring Road that zoned in on social controls under the policy.
The role of vaccines in tackling the pandemic: how China can make vaccines available for vaccinations amidst the outbreak of Covid
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.
In the run up to the Party Congress, local authorities around the country worked to stop epidemics related to the major political event.
“At the same time, the threat posed by Covid is reduced because of the higher vaccine coverage and the availability of antivirals. It is believed that the point of zero-covid has been reached and that it would be a good idea to maintain high vaccine coverage.
Health experts say increasing vaccinations is a key part of the way forward if the government hopes to minimize the impact as the virus inevitably spreads.
China has the ability to force the population to bevaccinated. After all, it has put entire cities with tens of millions of people into strict lockdowns.
The vaccine takes time, the expansion of the intensive care unit is not done yet, and so if you don’t see effort to prepare for the change, they are not going to change their policy soon.
The health code system is already being used to diffuse protest, with a group of people in rural banks barred from protesting after their health codes inexplicably turned red.
Xi Jinping: The Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the China Politics of the Great Deafness
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.
“When the ability to govern decreases, even in the absence of any particular policy from the top, the ineptitude, brutality, and ignorance of lower-level officials will brew disasters for the common people they rule over,” said Mr. Wu, who is a senior research scholar at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions.
Many business people have lost money because of zero- Covid, which has shut down cities and locked millions of people in their homes for weeks at a time as the government attempts to eliminate the coronaviruses.
We didn’t talk about politics over the years. I was surprised when he called after the party congress to talk about his “political depression.” He said he used to be very nationalistic, believing that the Chinese were among the smartest and the most hardworking people in the world. He and his friends spend most of their time hiking, golfing and drinking. He said that they were too depressed to work.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/07/business/xi-jinping-china-party-congress.html
A Chilean Silicon Valley Technie Announced by the Communist Party: “Fractional Zero COVID” and its Modifications
Until a year ago, his start-up was doing so well that he was planning to take it public. Then he lost a big chunk of his revenues and his new hires sat idly with nothing to do when cities were locked down under the “zero-Covid” rules. He said now he has no choice but to lay off more than 100 people, sell his business and move his family to North America.
A tech erin from Beijing told me about a chilling experience after the congress. When there were rumors that Beijing could be locked down, he was not able to tell his employees to leave early or stock up on groceries. He was worried that he could be reported for spreading rumors — something that had gotten people detained by the police. He told them that if they needed to leave early they should do so.
SHANGHAI — China on Friday announced steps to ease its “dynamic zero COVID” policy by shortening quarantine requirements, simplifying travel rules, and adjusting its monitoring and control regime.
The new measures were announced Friday following a meeting by the ruling Communist Party’s top decision-making body, during which leaders vowed to maintain Covid protocols while stressing the need to minimize economic and social disruptions.
The zero-tolerance approach has drawn a lot of public resentment, due to its heavy economic and social costs.
The so-called “circuit breaker” mechanism, under which China-bound flights were suspended if an airline carried passengers who tested positive for Covid, will disappear under the new measures.
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.
Covid-19 Tests in China: Why the Response of International Stock Markets and Workforces is Getting More Out of Control? The Evidence from Hong Kong
Markets responded positively to the changes as Covid-19 restrictions have kept international investors jittery. After the noon break, the Hang Seng index shot up 7%, while the benchmark index in mainland China went up 2.5%.
Under the new guidelines, people who are identified as close contacts of Covid-19 cases will have shortened their quaranche at centralized government-operated facilities down from seven days plus another three days to five days and three days at home.
According to Ben Cowling, an epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong, the guidelines do not lift testing for international travellers who do not have a rationale if the objective is still zero carbon dioxide.
The government reported 10,535 new domestically transmitted cases on Thursday, the highest in months, and the authorities girded for the situation to worsen.
The National Health Commission said the epidemic is likely to expand in scope and scale due to the weather and the changes in genetics.
Students are returning to remote learning in China. My 5-year-old daughter is on her second week off school after her kindergarten closed due to restrictions related to Covid-19. 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. This is bad for business, but it also affects ordinary people who might be locked down at work, at home, or even in a foreign country.
Some friends, who have suffered through an unexpected lockdown or two, have even taken to carrying a backpack full of clothes, toiletries and work essentials with them at all times in case they get trapped at the local pub.
One in five urban youth in the country are jobless, business meetings and trade shows are being postponed or canceled, and workplaces are regularly shuttered over concerns about the coronavirus, including the recent lockdown at a Foxconn manufacturing center — which left employees literally fleeing down a highway.
You would think traveling from a city with a well publicized disease outbreak would warrant a notice of self-isolation. Alas, not.
My wife and daughter who live with me were allowed to leave the apartment and walk around the city at their own discretion, while I stayed home for four days. Why is a policy intended to protect people’s health “to the greatest extent possible,” if it allows for such a great risk to public health?
Social media protests against zero-Covid: After the death of a two-year-old boy, a woman, and a girl
Demand for counseling services is up, and a nationwide survey conducted across China in 2020 found that nearly 35% of respondents were dealing with psychological distress amid the pandemic.
A woman suffering from anxiety disorders jumped to her death from her apartment building in the capital city of China.
On the same day Zhou lost his father, a 3-year-old boy died of gas poisoning in a locked-down compound in the northwestern city of Lanzhou, after he was blocked from being taken promptly to a hospital. A four-month-old girl died after a 12-hour delay in medical care in a hotel in Zhengzhou.
The fans are not told to wear masks or submit proof of the test results. Are they not living on the same planet as us?” asked a Wechat article questioning China’s insistence on zero-Covid, which went viral before it was censored.
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.
The government censoring posts related to the incident was one of the things that caused anger. Unverified videos circulating online show city residents taking to the streets in a rare show of resistance, shouting at what appears to be public health workers and riot police.
The zero-covid policy will not befundamentally changed in the short term, said Huang. The local governments have not changed their incentive structure. He said they are still held accountable for the situation in their jurisdiction.
In defiance of local orders, residents under Covid lockdown have taken to the streets and torn down barriers meant to confine them to their homes.
Covid workers in protective clothing can be seen standing on the sidelines while trying to talk to people on the street in a video. “They’re revolting,” a woman’s voice is heard saying in the background of one of the videos. 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.
Social media outrage over “pandemic containment measures” – China’s response to the Beijing-China summit summit summit: “We do not want to go home”
It is not clear how many people took part in the protest. Related posts were swiftly scrubbed from the Chinese internet by censors.
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. 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.
As he prepared for a week of diplomacy attending summits in Southeast Asia, it became obvious that China was ready to return to the world stage, as he would be meeting with key Western leaders in person this month.
Many migrant workers reside in Guangzhou’s Haizhu district where nighttime protests were shown, in areas known as “urban villages.”
Their circumstance can make the hardship of the oppressive measures even more so as it may be difficult for officials to know the true number of residents in a housing block. There’s also no option of remote work to preserve income for those employed in factories and on construction sites.
In messages shared on social media, observers noted hearing Haizhu residents originally from outside Guangzhou pleading for help from officials such as compensation for rent and free supplies.
In a video circulating on social media, a man can be heard screaming “Us Hubei people want to eat! We want to be free. referring to another province in China, where many migrant workers in the district come from. He is part of a crowd that’s gathered facing a Covid workers in hazmat suits.
In a separate clip of the same scene, another man asks the workers: “If your parents have gone sick, how would you feel? How would you feel if your children were denied from leaving for the hospital because of a disease?
People in another video can be heard shouting out their frustrations and desperation to a man who identifies himself as the neighborhood director and says he wants to address their concerns. One resident rushes forward to say that as non-local residents they’re left to queue for hours for Covid-19 testing and the meat sold to them by the government has gone bad, while they can’t get through to local support hotlines.
“Nobody came to explain and the community’s office line is always busy. Our landlord is not interested in if we live or die. What should we do?” While other members of the crowd shout “Unseal!” the resident says. Untightening!
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/15/china/china-covid-guangzhou-protests-intl-hnk/index.html
The family of a boy killed by the local government and the chaos in Beijing: A Haizhu district official spoke out against Covid restrictions
In the city news conference Monday, a Haizhu district official acknowledged the criticisms that restrictions could have been announced earlier and with more clarity.
On the day after their home in Beijing was locked down, Zhou saw his father alive in a video chat but he was nowhere to be found.
At the time, they didn’t even realize the snap Covid restrictions had been imposed – there was no warning beforehand, and the apartment building where Zhou’s parents and his 10-year-old son lived did not have any cases, he said.
Zhou told CNN in Beijing that the local government killed his father. 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 said he contacted several state media outlets in Beijing to report on his story, but no reporters came. Amid growing desperation and anger, he turned to foreign media – despite knowing the risk of repercussions from the government. CNN is only using his surname to mitigate that risk.
The biggest Apple assembly factory in the world had a clash with security officers due to delayed 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
Chongqing, China, a day after the World Cup: The public frustrations of the Covid lockdown in the era of the Internet age
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 freedom, I would rather die!” He shouted a hero’s name to a crowd of cheering people and wrestled the police officers who were trying to take him away.
These acts of defiance echoed an outpouring of discontent online, notably from Chinese football fans – many under some form of lockdown or restrictions – who have only been able to watch from home as tens of thousands of raucous fans pack stadiums at the World Cup in Qatar.
There are signs of the Chinese officials feeling the heat of the public discontent that has come on top of the heavy social and economic tolls inflicted by the widening lockdowns.
Instead of relaxing controls, many local officials are reverting to zero-tolerance and trying to wipe out infections as soon as possible.
Shijiazhuang, a city in the north, was the first to call off mass testing. It also allowed students to return to schools after a long period of online classes. Authorities asked residents to stay home on Monday because of cases that rose over the weekend.
On Tuesday, financial hub Shanghai banned anyone arriving in the city from entering venues including shopping malls, restaurants, supermarkets and gyms for five days. Authorities also shut down cultural and entertainment venues in half of the city.
In Guangzhou, officials this week extended the lockdown on Haizhu district – where the protest took place – for the fifth time, and locked down its most populous Baiyun district.
Throughout the weekend, some businesses were closed in Beijing, and city streets were largely deserted, as residents either fell ill or feared catching the virus. The biggest public crowds seen were outside of pharmacies and Covid-19 testing booths.
Chinese officials denied for the entire time that the 20 measures listed in the guidelines are meant to pivot to living with the virus.
The loss of a child, a lover and a friend: a country with zero-covid control, relaxation, and mental health
“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 a grandpa. 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.
There was a sense of uncertainty about the future after the changes, even though it was celebrated with relief by many and discussion online about freer travel within the country.
“The world changed overnight, and that’s really amazing,” said Echo Ding, 30, a manager at a tech company in Beijing. I feel like things are getting back to normal. If I don’t get back to a normal life, I might lose my mind.
“How can it change so fast?” He asked. “It gives me the feeling that we are like fools. It’s all up to them. They said it was good so then it was good for me. It is so unreal, but I have no choice. Follow the arrangement, all I can do is do it.
The changes were welcomed by David Wang, but he said they had also cause a feeling of astonishment in the city, which experienced a two-month-long, citywide lock-up earlier this year.
“Of course I was very happy about these new changes – (but) most of my friends are showing typical signs of PTSD, they just can’t believe it’s happening,” he said.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/08/china/china-zero-covid-relaxation-reaction-intl-hnk/index.html
Beijing Addressing Covid-19: Public Policy Reductions in the First Month of the Redivivum Epidemics and a Model for the Future
The Beijing health officials said that the new rules were based on scientific evidence, including the spread of the milder Omicron variant, the vaccine rate, and the experience of China in responding to the virus.
But the changes, which come on the heels of a wave of unprecendented protests across the country against harsh Covid restrictions, are a swift about-face for a government long bent on stamping out all infections. 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.
While Omicron may cause relatively milder disease compared to earlier variants, even a small number of serious cases could have a significant impact on the health system in a country of 1.4 billion.
Many reports of panic buying of medications were reported on Thursday morning, as the topics and hashtags surrounding what to do if Omicron appeared high on Weibo.
When it came to what kind of medicine they should have and how to handle the situation if they were hospitalized, people were not told. Sam Wang, a lawyer in Beijing, said that the policy release felt abrupt and arbitrary, and that it should have been done a 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. “She finds the virus a very, very scary thing,” Li said.
The fear of the impact of Covid-19 within china may play out across generations as younger people and those in more cosmopolitan urban centers are likely to support reopening the country, residents said.
The city of Beijing confronts the new zero-COVID-19 guidelines and the implications for public health in the coming era of an economic crisis
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.
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. Now, with the new rules she knew she could largely go out freely, but instead she stayed at home to “wait and see.”
The protests in a number of cities against the strict curfews are behind the announcement. Those led some cities to loosen some restrictions on testing and movement, but the new guidelines go further.
But the government hasn’t stated the goal of its new policy, which could create confusion, says Huang. The reopening is unlikely to happen in phases since local governments are likely to abandon all the zero-COVID measures without being prepared for the transition.
Researchers say that some aspects of the new rules are open to interpretation by local governments, for example when and where to test people during an outbreak and high-risk areas.
It will be difficult to limit transmission when you live in high-rise buildings in China. GeorgeLiu is a public health researcher at La Trobe University in Australia and he says that people will spread Viruses if they are allowed to Quarantine at Home. This can overwhelm hospitals.
The timing of the reopening is not ideal, say researchers. Hospitals will be seeing a rise in the number of patients during the peak of the flu season. Xi Chen, an economist who studies China’s public-health system at Yale University, said that many people will be travelling across the country for the Spring Festival and the lunar New Year.
China doesn’t have a strong system for primary healthcare and people go to the hospital for mild illnesses, which is what the government plans to change.
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.”
Cowling says urgent guidance is needed on how to curb transmission during a surge, which includes mask mandates, work-from- home policies and temporary school closings. 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.
Living with a lack of trust among older people: The role of vaccination mandates and vaccination mandate mandate mandates in the healthcare landscape, according to Chen
There is a general lack of trust in medical professionals, as well as serious vaccine hesitancy among older people. Many older people live in rural and remote areas so it will take time to vaccinate them, says Xi Chen.
The guidelines call for setting up mobile clinics and teaching medical staff how to deal with people’s safety concerns. They do not issue vaccine mandates or encourage local governments to increase their immunization rates. Whether the inevitable rise in infections will lead to a spike in deaths remains to be seen. “The full impact remains to be unfolded,” he says.
I have an advantage because I don’t go to an office to work. She’s not in contact with a lot of people because she has no job at a company or a government agency. I think I protect myself well.
Why vaccine insistancy persists in china and what they are doing about it: a case study of a 34-year-old girl who was bit by a dog
Several factors have contributed to the low vaccination rates among older adults. The effectiveness data didn’t include the elderly, but the vaccine campaigns started with essential workers. The government has a policy of “zero carbon dioxide”, which is mostly enforced, and it has a tendency to not move to ramp up vaccinations when there is a limited number of infections.
It has its roots in product quality issues that have been a problem for years with manufacturing in China. There are cases like Tan Hua’s that people feel good about.
In 2014, Tan, then 34 years old, was bitten by a dog. She saw a doctor and was given a shot of what her mother, Hua Xiuzhen, says they were told was the best rabies vaccine on the market. But it didn’t work out.
Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/12/09/1140830315/why-vaccine-hesitancy-persists-in-china-and-what-theyre-doing-about-it
Vaccines, vaccines and product quality scandals in China: Yanzhong Huang, a Hong Kong real estate executive, and an expert on health care in China
She had a headaches and felt unwell that night. Her memory went downhill in a hurry. She had convulsions. Everything was dark for her, she didn’t know what to think. She couldn’t walk straight,” Hua told NPR by phone.
They blamed the vaccine, and it’s been a crusade for justice ever since. She also now avoids all vaccines — including those for COVID-19, of which China has approved 12.
But lax oversight and corruption during recent decades of breakneck economic growth has led to a string of product quality scandals in China — from baby formula cut with industrial chemicals to contaminated blood thinner and tainted vaccines.
Yanzhong Huang, a China health care expert at Seton Hall University, says the government has done a bad job of messaging around the virus and debunking myths — despite near total control of the media environment in the country.
The vaccine skeptics are also liberal-minded. They just don’t trust the Chinese vaccines and the government narrative on the effectiveness of the Chinese vaccines,” he says.
Jerry, a real estate executive in Shanghai, is 33 years old — and a good example of that. He did not want his full name used because of the sensitivity of the topic.
Jerry reckons COVID-19 is “kind of a flu thing” these days; nothing too serious. He didn’t get the vaccine and he believes that there’s no point.
“I just think the virus is changing so fast. Not one vaccine can be enough to prevent transmission, so he focuses on the vaccine’s ability to prevent illness and death.
Jerry estimates that the vaccination rate among his friends — educated, 30-somethings in China’s most cosmopolitan city — may be as low as 60%. He says couples trying to get pregnant are particularly fearful of possible side-effects.
When the omicron variant hit in the spring, only about half of the people in Hong Kong were up to date on their vaccinations. Hospitals were quickly swamped and the rate of deaths-per-100,000 people spiked to the highest in the world. Many of the people who died were over the age of 60.
But Huang, of Seton Hall, says the government may be better off bolstering the incentives for people to get the vaccine, and offering assurances of support in case something goes wrong.
The Covid-19 outbreak has been rampantly spreading in China since the end of the mobile itinerary card ban: Experts say the problem isn’t over
The health tracking function for the mobile itinerary card was to be defenestrated 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.
There are questions about how the country’s health system will handle a mass outbreak as the scrapping of parts of the zero-covid infrastructure comes.
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 daily volume of emergency calls had surged from its usual 5,000 to more than 30,000 in recent days, Chen Zhi, chief physician of the Beijing Emergency Center said, 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.
“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.
Because of the rapid roll out of testing nationwide and the shift by many people to use home tests for STDs, it’s hard to gauge the extent of the spread.
After the removal of the policy by China, experts warned it may not be prepared to handle the expected surge of cases.
Zhong, in the state media interview, said the government’s top priority now should be booster shots, particularly for the elderly and others most at risk, especially with China’s Lunar New Year coming up next month – a peak travel time where urban residents visit elderly relatives and return to rural hometowns.
Measures to be undertaken include increasing ICU wards and beds, enhancing medical staff for intensive care and setting up more clinics for fevers, China’s National Health Commission said in a statement.
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.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/china/china-zero-covid-impact-beijing-intl-hnk-mic/index.html
China’s exit from “zero-carbon” policies has prompted public outrage over COVID-19 conditions in the wake of the October 4 holiday shopping season
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.
People who were positive for Covid-19 but did not have a lot of symptoms may not have to take medication according to a state media interview with a Beijing doctor.
“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.
A travel tracing requirement will not be required as part of China’s exit from “zero-carbon” policies that have gotten a lot of backlash.
The level of public political expression seen in decades was reached last month when protests in Beijing grew into calls for the leader of the Communist Party to step down.
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, which is tightly controlled by the government, sought to reassure a nervous public, stating that restrictions would continue to be dropped and travel, indoor dining and other economic activity would soon be returning to pre-pandemic conditions.
China announced only 8,500 new cases, bringing their total to over 350,000 cases and 5,235 deaths. Of the 1.1 million deaths in the United States, 1.1 million were COVID-19 deaths.
The Impact of the Xi-Demo announcement on China’s economy: Report on the Conversation with Lars Hamer on CNN, CNN, and Twitter
The economy in the three months ended in June shrunk by 2.6% from the previous quarter, and Xi’s government promised to lower the cost and disruption. The economists think the economy probably will shrink in the current quarter. Imports tumbled 10.9% from a year ago in November in a sign of weak demand.
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.
Last week’s announcement allowed considerable room for local governments to assign their own regulations. Most restaurants in Beijing, for example, still require a negative test result obtained over the previous 48 hours and rules are even stricter for government offices.
Editor’s Note: Lars Hamer is the Editor-in-Chief of the China lifestyle magazine, That’s. He was in Guangzhou, China, for the last year and a half. His own views are expressed in this commentary. Follow him on social media. Read more opinion on CNN.
A moment of pure disappointment in Guangzhou: a ghost town turned into a bustling metropolis in the era of Covid-19
It’s the knock every resident here dreads. A loud bang at my apartment door early Tuesday morning was a sign that someone was inside. The fear washed over me and the health care workers told everyone to go downstairs because a neighbor had tested positive.
I had good reason to worry. One month ago, a teacher friend and his colleagues were sent toCentralized Quarantine after a student at his school tested positive for Covid-19. I feared the same was about to happen to me.
To my surprise, nothing of the sort. I took a Covid-19 test and underwhelmingly, that was it. Before my result came out I could leave my house and be anywhere I wanted to be for the day.
I would have been powerless to avoid being labeled as a close contact, like my friend, had this happened just weeks before.
When I moved to Guangzhou five years ago, the city was a Covid-19 ghost town, but now it has turned into a bustling metropolis.
The blocking of fire exits in the event of a lockdown is banned by the new measure. People who are exposed can stay out of one another’s sight. Quarantine facilities will soon be something 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.
I spent most days working until late at night because it was the only thing to do; non-essential businesses had closed, and millions of people were confined to their homes. I started to consider leaving the country after feeling the strain.
It was a moment of pure disbelief. Guangzhou had almost 8,000 cases that day, numbers similar to those that triggered a city-wide lockdown in Shanghai in April.