China opens its borders, and welcomes visitors again, starting January 8. The only remaining Covid-era requirement will be to show a negative PCR test taken within 48 hours. That’s a wrap on Zero Covid, even for foreigners who were often blamed by China even though the virus almost certainly originated in or near Wuhan.
The country no longer pursues zero Covid, they just pursue a policy of no longer reporting most Covid cases. In some sense that isn’t all that different from most other countries, except for the magnitude of virus spread there right now as Covid-19 rips across a largely immunologically naive population. Why the change, and why now?
Covid spread was inevitable once extreme controls were lifted, and with the incredible infectiousness of current variants to some extent even with those controls still in place – draconian lockdowns with people going hungry, government quarantine facilities, and even an apartment building that burned with residents trapped inside. Protests were rampant – and so the government both clamped down on the protests while mollifying them.
WATCH: Protests are breaking out across China from Beijing to other major cities in the country over Covid lockdowns
— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) November 27, 2022
On Nov 23, when a fire broke out in #Urumqi , people’s doors were locked from outside. Fire truck couldn’t get closer either( see my previous tweet). The latest figure says 44 were burnt to death, including a 3 y/o kid. That’s one of the reasons for today’s protests. pic.twitter.com/s4E0JHk4wQ
— Inconvenient Truths by Jennifer Zeng 曾錚真言 (@jenniferzeng97) November 25, 2022
Viruses spread. Early in the pandemic it made sense to delay that spread. The U.S. didn’t use the time from lockdowns and travel restrictions well, except in biomedicine. China wasn’t benefiting from delay – it wasn’t a bridge to treatments and vaccines, or buying time to prepare hospitals – but it was still enduring significant costs.
Another way to ask the question is, why did the policy last so long? Mass virus spread, policy failure, inability to protect the citizenry would have undermined President Xi’s cause for an unprecedented third term at the Twentieth Congress. Once that had been achieved, Zero Covid served no real purpose.
Elites in China likely stopped believing in Zero Covid long before protests had spread, but couldn’t speak to it. It wasn’t possible to prepare for an alternate policy, because doing so would have expressed lack of confidence in official policy. Lifting restrictions meant a vacuum of alternatives. Now, after three years of extreme measures, the leadership appears to feel a need to get the pain over as quickly as possible.
You’d have to be seven kinds of stupid to travel to China anytime soon and risk getting locked down somewhere without notice.
It was the 20th PARTY congress. The PEOPLE’s congress will be in March. I’d say Xi isn’t 100% secured yet for a 3rd term as president, depending on what happens in the next 2 months.
Why now? It seems counterintuitive to Americans but the reality is that the CCP is far more responsive to the demands of its population than Democrats/Republicans are in the United States. People in the US were fed up with Covid restrictions well before politicians were ready to retire them and it was only thanks to judicial redress – a long and agonizing process – that restrictions were lifted in places like California and New York. The right to go to pray in a church or synagogue was only restored in the United States after going to the Supreme Court twice! The Chinese lockdowns were always pointless, bizarre, and cruel – though no more so than in, say, Australia, Italy, or Spain – but once the Chinese people spoke up and protested the government changed policy almost immediately.
It’s very difficult to keep a fraud going indefinitely.
If their visa policy hasn’t changed it still could be as difficult to visit as, say, the U.S. But they were wise to finally end a hopeless policy. Having a locally developed vaccine that didn’t work very well, and then refusing to take better ones from the West, didn’t help either. But mixing science and politics is certainly not limited to China. Hopefully this final (?) wave of worldwide infections won’t lead to a new and more dangerous variant. But right from the beginning epidemiologists knew that once such a plague widely spreads there is no way to control it short of reaching a balance with a (in the best case) well vaccinated population. But that’s something which governments didn’t want to admit.
@drrichard The Chinese vaccines worked fine – adenovirus based like Jensen in the USA – and 80% or so were vaccinated. The only problem was that in China it was the wrong 80%, with old people most often declining it (same situation in Hong Kong), and young people who didn’t need it taking it near 100%. The Chinese lockdowns — like lockdowns everywhere — had no basis in science, but rather in politics. When it came too politically expensive to keep Zero Covid, the health concerns somehow evaporated overnight.
China is doing this because of a combination of:
mass frustration (and protest risks) with Covid lockdowns even when cases were very low;
the economic hit to the country from the wave of shutdowns and the uncertainty that it drives and the drop in economic activity that comes with that uncertainty; and
the strategic economic risk arising from supply chains shifting away from China to other countries in Asia (and elsewhere).
China wants to get back into business because it needs a big economic boost to try to stimulate things before the young adult unemployment situation in China gives way to mass revolt against the CCP.
It’s noteworthy that the anti-Uighur(/minority) sentiment within China has somewhat dropped in popularity as the critical sentiment against the CCP rises among the Han population. But Xi seems more locked into power than he already even was in prior years. And the campaign China unleashed against the Uighur throughout Xi years has prepared the Chinese government to crack down on all dissent across the entire country — even that coming from the Han majority with closer ties to CCP leadership.
@GUWonder “But Xi seems more locked into power than he already even was in prior years. And the campaign China unleashed against the Uighur throughout Xi years has prepared the Chinese government to crack down on all dissent across the entire country — even that coming from the Han majority with closer ties to CCP leadership.”
To the contrary. This episode shows just how little power Xi actually has, such that a few scattered protests (and a large internet protest) could force him to change a policy that he had essentially staked his career on and had so much invested in. We might have suspected that the Chinese government was prepared to “crack down on dissent,” but when dissent appeared there was little ability or interest in suppressing it. Xi followed the people, and certainly didn’t lead them to the end of Zero Covid.
This is about allowing the elites to celebrate CNY abroad more than allowing people into China.
When an authoritarian regime liberalizes a bit, it is often seized on as a sign of weakness of the authoritarian regime and then gives rise to more protests against a regime. While at times such openings can lead to a transition away from authoritarianism, at other times (or at least early on during a transition) it can lead to a further entrenchment of the power of the powerful and more brutality against dissent.
The Chinese have upped their hostile border games against India too. Seems to me that Xi is looking to harness majoritarian nationalism at this time. And since the PLA is following his orders to the T and he’s got control of the police leadership and the domestic surveillance apparatus, Xi has more power and concentrated power now than when he first came into office.
Oh yeah, let’s ALL go to China, after all , they did manufacture and disperse a virus that encircled and infected the whole world and killed millions.
@GUWonder “While at times such openings can lead to a transition away from authoritarianism, at other times (or at least early on during a transition) it can lead to a further entrenchment of the power of the powerful and more brutality against dissent.”
This isn’t a transition. It’s just the way things work in China. Virtually all major policy moves have been driven by the people, often in protest, and the CCP is forced to come along. Not the other way around as is often presumed.
Mak – Bullshit!
“ Virtually all major policy moves have been driven by the people, often in protest, and the CCP is forced to come along. Not the other way around as is often presumed.”
So you’re trying to sell us on the CCP being very responsive to the general public in China and tolerant of protest? Come on, that’s not how China works. The CCP responds to the interests and wishes of the CCP leadership and their nepotism-riding princelings.
GUWonder – you are 100% correct.
The as typical initial vague government pronouncements are being parsed and attempted to interpret how they impact the mechanics of travel to China. The requirement to get embassy/consulate green code test verification is ending, the requirement to get a new test and code if transiting a third country (other than the stay on plane direct flights such as US airlines have been running via Seoul) is ending, the catch for some is, per TIMATIC, that the 48-hour rule for test applies to departure time of last direct flight to China rather than start of travel, so mind the connection time. We’ve got a DL + KE award for a family member at comparatively non-predatory pricing that lining up testing with the boarding of that KE flight will be tight. Incidentally, since yesterday TIMATIC shows the South Korea restrictions on transit to China dropped back to the normal “visa required.” Will be moment by moment upgrades for a while especially since this news dropped around Christmas/New Year’s when many world airlines asleep or distracted with their operational meltdowns. I haven’t seen any response from US airlines yet on when they will increase flights and start from nonstop again.
TIMATIC as of 12/28/22:
“Warning:
Nationals of China (People’s Rep.) must have a green QR code with an ‘HS’ mark. The code can be obtained from the WeChat App ‘Fang Yi Jian Kang Ma Guo Ji Ban’ by uploading a negative COVID-19 PCR test taken at most 48 hours before departure of the last direct flight to China. For more information, please refer to the website of the Chinese embassy in the departure country.”
@James N
If anyone should know that would be YOU!
@GUWonder “So you’re trying to sell us on the CCP being very responsive to the general public in China and tolerant of protest? Come on, that’s not how China works. The CCP responds to the interests and wishes of the CCP leadership and their nepotism-riding princelings.”
I make no claims about the CCPs tolerance of protest – but the fact is that this protest was tolerated far more than the 1/6 protest in the USA – but one can either say that the CCP is responsive to the people or (more likely) that it knows that it is powerless to fight them. The history of modern China is the CCP trying to enforce policies that the people won’t follow and changing policy when it realizes that it is without power to stop it without risking the CCP’s monopoly at the head of the system. I strongly recommend the works of historian Frank Dikötter, but especially his latest “China After Mao,” which reinforces this point using original source material from Chinese archives made available to the public after 30 years.
WOW,! Soo many wannabee China experts.
I lived in China, May 2015-September 2017. Shortly after Xi was President. And I do business with 4, large manufacturing facilities I certainly don’t profess, to have my own narrative, as everyone else seems to have. My key contact, lives in Shanghai, and was locked down for almost 3 months.
Others in.Schenzhen and Foshan, who had spurts of fairly short lockdowns.
Everyone can take uneducated guesses, as to the methodology of how China has managed, or mismanaged Wuhan, and Covid from the inception of when it started.
The Chinese government, cannot show a weakness or chink in their armor. So they must, stay firm, even when, behind closed doors, they are confused and, throw the shit on the wall, and hope something sticks. They are no different than every other country. There was no crystal ball, and Trumps mistake, was contacting the worse individual possible, but had great longevity at “Infectious Disease”, at CDC, aka Anthony Fauci. Don’t blame Trump. Fauci was the most experienced individual on subject, possibly in the world.
Well, we know how that turned out.
Getting back to China. After Xi came into power, he either knew, or was told, China must change their philosophical approach, to start change from within, and befriend other Heads of State, that is greatly needed, to move into the world stage, in getting things done.
Even when I arrived in China, 2015, CCTV preached the Chinese way, or the One Belt, One Road aka highway. One Belt, One Road, was to put China in control. They sell it, as a benefit for those that joined them.
Fast forward. Today, China has serious problems, and realize the Chinese people, unlike in the past, are speaking out, much to the chagrin of the CCP.
They are going through a sort of menopause, and running Helter Skelter. They are in a State of flux, aka confusion, (Can’t ask Confucius) and can’t B.S. their way through it. Enter, the element of surprise.
Opening up, a bigger can of worms, than the Wuhan lab!
They didn’t do this for anyone, except China. Hmmm, sounds familiar doesn’t it? Bite the proverbial bullet, and calm the natives. Screw everyone else. Sound familiar?
This chapter is on page 1, paragraph 2. A lot is yet to be discovered. I don’t believe Xi will be affected. And, the CCP didn’t coward! It was the last piece of cow dung, left on the wall. What else could they do? Punt!