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After more than two successful years, China’s “zero Covid” policy began to show signs of exhaustion. With the arrival of the omicron variant, the country began to record numbers of daily infections in the thousands for the first time since 2020 and already has almost 40 million people in lockdown in several cities.
- In Shanghai, where leaks from a quarantine hospital are said to have been responsible for making the virus circulate again, hundreds of condominiums have been locked down after the city has recorded more than 700 cases since the beginning of the month. The initial intention was to buy time for mass testing, but the task that should finish in two days must extend to at least five.
Schools have returned to the EAD regime and non-essential workers are being encouraged to stay at home. On social networks, photos of volunteers from the task force against the epidemic are multiplying, sleeping absolutely exhausted on sofas. The city administration said it was in “war mode” against the virus, “at the worst time since 2020”.
- In Shenzhen, in southern China, 17 million people are confined. The situation worries tech companies, as the factories responsible for assembling electronics for brands like Apple and Samsung are in the city.
Changchun, close to the border with North Korea, concentrates the most serious outbreak, with thousands of cases recorded daily:
- The city has completed the construction of a huge field hospital, prepared to receive more than 1,500 Covid patients, in addition to 700 beds for isolation. Such facilities had not been seen since the outbreak in Wuhan;
- All 9 million inhabitants were placed in lockdown;
- Toyota, which has a plant in the city, has suspended production.
There are still no plans for a nationwide shutdown, given the impact of the measure on the economy. The government, however, does not seem willing to give up the “Covid zero” policy and has demanded that provincial authorities work more efficiently in containing the disease.
The context: When the transmissibility rates of the omicron made the number of contagions jump around the world, China showed signs that it understood the impossibility of continuing with zero Covid infections. The country approved the Pfizer pill for home treatment of the disease, released self-tests and began to prepare the population for a gradual opening of borders through official declarations.
Losing control of Covid still in 2022, however, was never an option.
In November, Communist Party officials will meet to enshrine Xi Jinping’s likely third term (the result of a controversial law that removed the limit on reelections from the Constitution). Instability in such a crucial year for the future of the CCP and the country itself is everything Beijing does not want.
what also matters
The state news agency Xinhua published a report in which it accuses the Western media of “recruiting a group of Chinese professionals [para atuar] as pawns and propagate a rhetoric of attack on China”.
The text says that Chinese journalists are paid to misrepresent the country’s image abroad and “stimulate ideological bias in the name of so-called ‘press freedom’, using a pile of false reports”.
The outlet criticizes some of the coverage it considers controversial, such as the zero-tolerance policy for coronavirus infections, the cover-up of the first Covid cases in Wuhan in late 2019 and reports of forced labor by the Uighur Muslim minority in Xinjiang province.
“Not understanding China’s development path, these so-called ‘China experts’ have become complicit in Western media’s disinformation campaigns and partially explain the decline in public trust in the press,” the agency concludes.
The Chinese diplomatic mission to the European Union reacted to comments by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who said he was “closely monitoring” signs of Beijing’s support for Moscow.
Stoltenberg demanded from the Chinese a firmer position on the conflict and demanded “obligation, as a member of the UN Security Council, to really support and defend international law”.
The speech got bad. In a statement to the press, the diplomats said they did not need “lectures on international law” and recalled that “the Chinese people have never forgotten who bombed our embassy in Yugoslavia.”
The commentary alludes to an episode in 1999. Led by US forces, NATO dropped five bombs on Chinese facilities in Belgrade, killing three Chinese journalists. The then US President Bill Clinton apologized and said it was an operational error, but Beijing has never forgotten the episode.
keep an eye
More than 50,000 people left Hong Kong in the first half of March alone, in an exodus motivated by the lack of control in Covid cases in the city and the subsequent social distancing restrictions announced by the executive branch. According to the South China Morning Post, the highest number of departures so far was recorded on March 6, when 5,082 people left the city.
Most of these people leave Hong Kong for cities in neighboring Guangdong province in mainland China. In the population, there is the feeling of living in the worst of two worlds: closed borders and the worst Covid outbreak worldwide (in proportionate numbers, taking into account the population).
to go deep
- Registrations for HICOOL, one of the biggest startup competitions in China, are open until the 30th. The contest rewards initiatives already installed in Beijing or those willing to move to the Chinese capital. Winners take home checks ranging from 200,000 to 2 million yuan (R$158,000 to R$1.58 million). (free, in English)
- This Saturday (19) at 1 pm, Observa China will hold a conversation with Rui Ma about technological trends in the country in 2022. Rui is the founder of the Tech Buzz China portal and has nearly two decades of experience in technology and finance. Registration at this link. (free, in English)
- Will China’s “Zero Covid” Policy Survive the Omicron? To answer the question, Thais Moretz’s e-FeitoNaChina channel interviews Josef Mahoney, executive director of the International Center for Advanced Political Studies at East China Normal University. (free, in English with subtitles in Portuguese)
