HONG KONG/BEIJING, Jan 8 (Reuters) – Travellers began streaming into mainland China by air, land and sea on Sunday, many eager for long-awaited reunions, as Beijing opened borders that have been all but shut since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
After three years, mainland China opened sea and land crossings with Hong Kong and ended a requirement for incoming travellers to quarantine, dismantling a final pillar of a zero-COVID policy that had shielded China’s people from the virus but also cut them off from the rest of the world.
China’s easing over the past month of one of the world’s tightest COVID regimes followed historic protests against a policy that included frequent testing, curbs on movement and mass lockdowns that heavily damaged the second-biggest economy.
Long queues formed at Hong Kong’s international airport for flights to mainland cities including Beijing, Tianjin and Xiamen and some Hong Kong media outlets estimated that thousands of people were travelling across.
“I’m so happy, so happy, so excited. I haven’t seen my parents for many years,” said Hong Kong resident Teresa Chow as she and dozens of other travellers prepared to cross into mainland China from Hong Kong’s Lok Ma Chau checkpoint early on Sunday.
“My parents are not in good health, and I couldn’t go back to see them even when they had colon cancer, so I’m really happy to go back and see them now,” she said, adding that she plans to head to her hometown in eastern China’s Ningbo city.
Investors hope the reopening will eventually reinvigorate a $17-trillion economy suffering its lowest growth in nearly half a century. But the abrupt policy reversal has triggered a massive wave of infections that is overwhelming some hospitals and causing business disruptions.
The border opening follows Saturday’s start of “chun yun”, the first 40-day period of Lunar New Year travel, which before the pandemic was the world’s largest annual migration of people returning to their hometowns of taking holidays with family.
Some 2 billion trips are expected to be made this season, nearly double last year’s movement and recovering to 70% of 2019 levels, the government says.
Many Chinese are also expected to start travelling abroad, a long-awaited shift for tourist spots in countries such as Thailand and Indonesia, though several governments – worried about China’s COVID spike – are imposing curbs on travellers from the country.
Travel will not quickly return to pre-pandemic levels due to such factors as a dearth of international flights, analysts say.
China on Sunday also resumed issuing passports and travel visas for mainland residents, and ordinary visas and residence permits for foreigners. Beijing has quotas on the number of people who can travel between Hong Kong and China each day.
VISITORS, HOMECOMINGS
At the Beijing Capital International Airport, families and friends exchanged emotional hugs and greetings with passengers arriving from Hong Kong, Warsaw and Frankfurt at the airport’s terminal 3, meetings at the arrival hall that would have been impossible just a day ago due to a now cancelled requirement for travellers from abroad to quarantine.
“I’ve been looking forward to the reopening for a long time. Finally we are reconnected with the world. I’m thrilled, I can’t believe it’s happening,” said a business woman surnamed Shen, 55, who flew in from Hong Kong.
Other people waiting at the airport included a group of females fans carrying long lens cameras in hope of catching a glimpse of South Korean boy band Tempest, the first idol group from South Korea to enter China in the past three years.
“It’s so good to see them in person! They are much more handsome and taller than I expected,” a 19-year-old who gave her name as Xiny told Reuters after chasing the seven-member boyband, who flew in from Seoul via the Chinese city of Dalian.
“With quarantine restrictions lifted, it’s going to be so much more convenient to fly over to see them, and for them to come to Beijing,” she said.
PROTESTS
Such scenes of reunions, however, jarred with others of protests in some cities around China over the weekend, in a reminder of how the economy remains under strain.
Protests are not rare in China, which has over the years seen people come out in large numbers over issues such as financial or property scams. But authorities have been on higher alert after widespread protests in Chinese cities and top universities at the end of November against COVID restrictions.
On Saturday, hundreds of Tesla (TSLA.O) owners gathered at the automaker’s showrooms and distribution centres in China to protest against its decision to slash prices for the second time in three months, a move it made to spur sales at a time of faltering demand in the world’s largest auto market.
(This story has been refiled to correct paragraph 9 to say 2 billion trips to be made, not 2 billion people to travel)
Reporting by Joyce Zhou in Hong Kong, Yew Lun Tian and Josh Arslan in Beijing; Writing by Brenda Goh in Shanghai; Editing by William Mallard
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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.
Hong Kong CNN
—
After a tumultuous end to a momentous and challenging year, China heads into 2023 with a great deal of uncertainty – and potentially a glimpse of light at the end of the pandemic tunnel.
The chaos unleashed by leader Xi Jinping’s abrupt and ill-prepared exit from zero-Covid is spilling over into the new year, as large swathes of the country face an unprecedented Covid wave.
But the haphazard reopening also offers a glimmer of hope for many: after three years of stifling Covid restrictions and self-imposed global isolation, life in China may finally return to normal as the nation joins the rest of the world in learning to live with the virus.
“We have now entered a new phase of Covid response where tough challenges remain,” Xi said in a nationally televised New Year’s Eve speech. “Everyone is holding on with great fortitude, and the light of hope is right in front of us. Let’s make an extra effort to pull through, as perseverance and solidarity mean victory.”
Xi had previously staked his political legitimacy on zero-Covid. Now, as his costly strategy gets dismantled in an abrupt U-turn following nationwide protests against it, many are left questioning his wisdom. The protests, which in some places saw rare demands for Xi and the Communist Party to “step down,” may have ended, but the overriding sense of frustration has yet to dissipate.
His New Year speech comes as China’s lockdown-battered economy faces more immediate strain from a spiraling outbreak that has hit factories and businesses, ahead of what is likely to be a long and complicated road to economic recovery.
Its tightly-sealed borders are gradually opening up, and Chinese tourists are eager to explore the world again, but some countries appear cautious to receive them, imposing new requirements for a negative Covid test before travel. And just how quickly – or keenly – global visitors will return to China is another question.
Xi, who recently reemerged on the world stage after securing a third term in power, has signaled he hopes to mend frayed relations with the West, but his nationalist agenda and “no-limits friendship” with Russia is likely to complicate matters.
As 2023 begins, CNN takes a look at what to watch in China in the year ahead.
The most urgent and daunting task facing China in the new year is how to handle the fallout from its botched exit from zero-Covid, amid an outbreakthat threatens to claim hundreds of thousands of lives and undermine the credibility of Xi and his Communist Party.
The sudden lifting of restrictions last month led to an explosion of cases, with little preparation in place to deal with the surging numbers of patients and deaths.
The country’s fragile heath system is scrambling to cope: fever and cold medicines are hard to find, hospitals are overwhelmed, doctors and nurses are stretched to the limit, while crematoriums are struggling to keep up with an influx of bodies.
And experts warn the worst is yet to come. While some major metropolises like Beijing may have seen the peak of the outbreak, less-developed cities and the vast rural hinterland are still bracing for more infections.
As the travel rush for the Lunar New Year – the most important festival for family reunion in China – begins this week, hundreds of millions of people are expected to return to their hometowns from big cities, bringing the virus to the vulnerable countryside where vaccination rates are lower and medical resources even scarcer.
The outlook is grim. Some studies estimate the death toll could be in excess of a million, if China fails to roll out booster shots and antiviral drugs fast enough.
The government has launched a booster campaign for the elderly, but many remain reluctant to take it due to concerns about side effects. Fighting vaccine hesitancy will require significant time and effort, when the country’s medical workers are already stretched thin.
Beijing’s Covid restrictions have put China out of sync with the rest of the world. Three years of lockdowns and border curbs have disrupted supply chains, damaged international businesses, and hurt flows of trade and investment between China and other countries.
As China joins the rest of the world in living with Covid, the implications for the global economy are potentially huge.
Anyuptick in China’s growth will provide a vital boost to economies that rely on Chinese demand. There will be more international travel and production. But rising demand will also drive up prices of energy and raw materials, putting upward pressure on global inflation.
“In the short run, I believe China’s economy is likely to experience chaos rather than progress for a simple reason: China is poorly prepared to deal with Covid,” said Bo Zhuang, senior sovereign analyst at Loomis, Sayles & Company, an investment firm based in Boston.
Analysts from Capital Economics expect China’s economy to contract by 0.8% in the first quarter of 2023, before rebounding in the second quarter.
Other experts also expect the economy to recover after March. In a recent research report, HSBC economists projected a 0.5% contraction in the first quarter, but 5% growth for 2023.
Despite all this uncertainty, Chinese citizens are celebrating the partial reopening of the borderafter the end of quarantine for international arrivals andthe resumption of outbound travel.
Though some residents voiced concern online about the rapid loosening of restrictions during the outbreak, many more are eagerly planning trips abroad – travel websites recorded massive spikes in traffic within minutes of the announcement on December 26.
Several Chinese nationals overseas told CNN they had been unable or unwilling to return home for the last few years while the lengthy quarantine was still in place. That stretch meant major life moments missed and spent apart: graduations, weddings, childbirths, deaths.
Some countries have offered a warm welcome back, with foreign embassies and tourism departments postinginvitations to Chinese travelers on Chinese social media sites.But others are more cautious, with many countries imposing new testing requirements for travelers coming from China and its territories.
Officials from these countries have pointed to the risk of new variants emerging from China’s outbreak – though numerous health experts have criticized the targeted travel restrictions as scientifically ineffective and alarmist, with the risk of inciting further racism and xenophobia.
As China emerges from its self-imposed isolation, all eyes are on whether it will be able to repair its reputation and relations that soured during the pandemic.
China’s ties with the West and many of its neighbors plummeted significantly over the origins of the coronavirus, trade, territorial claims, Beijing’s human rights record and its close partnership with Russia despite the devastating war in Ukraine.
The lack of top-level face-to-face diplomacy certainly didn’t help, neither did the freeze on in-person exchanges among policy advisers, business groups and the wider public.
At the G20 and APEC summits, Xi signaled his willingness to repair relations with the United States and its allies in a flurry of bilateral meetings.
Communication lines are back open and more high-level exchanges are in the pipeline – with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, French President Emmanuel Macron, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Italy’s newly elected Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni all expected to visit Beijing this year.
But Xi also made clear his ambition to push back at American influence in the region, and there is no illusion that the world’s two superpowers will be able to work out their fundamental differences and cast aside their intensifying rivalry.
In the new year, tensions may again flare over Taiwan, technological containment, as well as China’s support for Russia – which Xi underlined during a virtual meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on December 30.
Both leaders expressed a message of unity, with Xi saying the two countries should “strengthen strategic coordination” and “inject more stability into the world,” according to Chinese state media Xinhua.
China is “ready to work” with Russia to “stand against hegemonism and power politics,” and to oppose unilateralism, protectionism and “bullying,” said Xi. Putin, meanwhile, invited Xi to visit Moscow in the spring of 2023.
Beijing has long refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or even refer to it as such. It has instead decried Western sanctions and amplified Kremlin talking points blaming the US and NATO for the conflict.
As Russia suffered humiliating military setbacks in Ukraine in recent months, Chinese state media appeared to have somewhat dialed back its pro-Russia rhetoric, while Xi has agreed to oppose the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine in meetings with Western leaders.
But few experts believe China will distance itself from Russia, with several telling CNN the two countries’ mutual reliance and geopolitical alignment remains strong – including their shared vision for a “new world order.”
“(The war) has been a nuisance for China this past year and has affected China’s interest in Europe,” said Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Washington-based think tank Stimson Center. “But the damage is not significant enough that China will abandon Russia.”
As China moves ever closer to fully reemerging from three years of government-imposed Covid isolation and reintegrating with the world, economic expectations are high.
Beijing’s recent pivot from its stringent zero-Covid strategy — which had long choked businesses — is expected to inject vitality into the world’s second-largest economy next year.
Covid lockdowns and border curbs have left China out of sync with the rest of the world, disrupting supply chains and damaging the flow of trade and investment.
And with the global economy now facing significant challenges, including energy shortages, slowing growth and high inflation, China’s reopening could provide a much-needed and timely boost.
But the process of reopening is likely to be erratic and painful, according to economists, with the country’s economy in for a bumpy ride in the first few months of 2023.
China’s historic property downturn and a potential global recession could also cause more headaches in the new year, they added.
“In the short run, I believe China’s economy is likely to experience chaos rather than progress for a simple reason: China is poorly prepared to deal with Covid,” said Bo Zhuang, senior sovereign analyst at Loomis, Sayles & Company, a Boston-based investment firm.
For nearly three years, China stuck to its zero-tolerance approach to the virus, even though the policy caused unprecedented economic damage and widespread frustration. In 2022, growth slowed sharply, company profits collapsed, and youth unemployment surged to record levels.
Amid growing public unrest and financial pressure, the government abruptly changed course this month, effectively abandoning zero-Covid.
While the easing of restrictions is a long-awaited relief for many, the abruptness of it has caught an unprepared public off guard and left them largely to fend for themselves.
“In the initial phase, I believe the reopening may unleash a wave of Covid cases that could overwhelm the health care system, dampening consumption and production in the process,” Zhuang said.
Already, the rapid spread of infection has driven many people indoors and emptied shops and restaurants. Factories and companies have also been forced to shut or cut production because more workers are getting sick.
“Living with Covid will be more difficult than many assume,” said analysts from Capital Economics.
They expect China’s economy to contract by 0.8% in the first quarter of 2023, before rebounding in the second quarter.
Other experts also expect the economy to recover after March. In a recent research report,HSBC economists projected a 0.5% contraction in the first quarter, but 5% growth overall for 2023.
China’s haphazard reopening isn’t the only factor dragging on the economy. In 2023, experts will continue to watch how policymakers attempt to fix the country’s ailing real estate sector, which accounts for nearly 30% of its GDP.
The crisis in the industry — which started late in 2021 when several high-profile developers defaulted on their debt — has delayed or halted construction of pre-sold homes across the country. That triggered a rare protest by homebuyers this year, who refused to pay mortgages on unfinished homes.
While Beijing has made a series of attempts to rescue the sector — including unveiling a 16-point plan last month to ease the credit crunch — statistics still paint a gloomy picture.
Property sales by value plunged more than 26% in the first 11 months of this year. Investment in the sector fell by 9.8%.
At a key policy meeting earlier this month, top leaders vowed to focus on boosting the economy next year, suggesting they would roll out new measures that improve the financial condition of the property sector and boost market confidence.
“The measures announced so far are not sufficient to drive a turnaround, but policymakers have signaled that more support is on its way,” said Capital Economics analysts.
“This should reassure homebuyers enough to lift sales perhaps before the middle of next year.”
A potential global recession is another key concern that will shape China’s economic landscape in 2023.
Trade had powered much of China’s economic growth earlier this year, as exports were boosted by rising prices of the country’s goods and a weaker currency.
But in recent months, the trade sector — which makes up around a fifth of China’s GDP and supplies 180 million jobs — has started showing cracks from a global economic slowdown.
Last month, China’s outbound shipments contracted 8.7% from a year earlier, much worse than October’s 0.3% drop. That marked the worst performance since February 2020, when the Chinese economy came to a near standstill amid the initial coronavirus outbreak.
Countries around the world are facing recession as policymakers continue hiking interest rates to combat surging inflation.
“[China’s] exports have already reversed much of their pandemic-era boom,” said Capital Economics analysts.
“But a looming global recession means they probably have further to fall over the next few quarters.”
Online searches for flights spike – travel platforms
COVID wave overwhelms hospitals, weighs on economy
BEIJING, Dec 27 (Reuters) – Chinese people, cut off from the rest of the world for three years by stringent COVID-19 curbs, flocked to travel sites on Tuesday ahead of borders reopening next month, even as rising infections strained the health system and roiled the economy.
Zero-COVID measures in place since early 2020 – from shuttered borders to frequent lockdowns – last month fuelled the Chinese mainland’s biggest show of public discontent since President Xi Jinping took power in 2012.
His subsequent abrupt U-turn on the curbs, which have battered the $17-trillion economy, the world’s second-largest, means the virus is now spreading largely unchecked across the country of 1.4 billion people.
Official statistics, however, showed only one COVID death in the seven days to Monday, fuelling doubts among health experts and residents about the government’s data. The numbers are inconsistent with the experience of much less populous countries after they re-opened.
Doctors say hospitals are overwhelmed with five-to-six-times more patients than usual, most of them elderly. International health experts estimate millions of daily infections and predict at least one million COVID deaths in China next year.
Nevertheless, Chinese authorities are determined to dismantle the last vestiges of their zero-COVID policies.
In a major step towards freer travel – cheered by global stock markets on Tuesday – China will stop requiring inbound travellers to go into quarantine from Jan. 8, the National Health Commission (NHC) said late on Monday.
“It finally feels as if China has turned the corner,” AmCham China Chairman Colm Rafferty said of the imminent lifting of the quarantine rule.
There are no official restrictions on Chinese people going abroad but the new rule will make it much easier for them to return home.
Travel platform Ctrip’s data showed that within half an hour of the news, searches for popular cross-border destinations had increased 10-fold. Macau, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand and South Korea were the most sought-after, Ctrip said.
Data from Trip.com showed outbound flights bookings were up 254% early on Tuesday from the day before.
China’s National Immigration Administration said on Tuesday that it would resume processing passport applications of Chinese nationals seeking to travel abroad and approving visits of mainland residents to Hong Kong.
China will also resume the implementation of a policy allowing visa-free transit of up to 144 hours for travellers. The extension or renewal of foreigners’ visas will also be restored, the immigration administration added.
Shares in global luxury goods groups, which rely heavily on Chinese shoppers, rose on Tuesday on the easing of travel restrictions. China accounts for 21% of the world’s 350-billion euro luxury goods market.
Ordinary Chinese and travel agencies, however, suggested that a return to anything like normal would take some months yet, given worries about COVID and more careful spending because of the impact of the pandemic.
Separately, once the border with Hong Kong reopens next month, mainland Chinese will be able to take BioNTech-made mRNA vaccines, seen as more effective than the domestically-developed options available on the mainland.
‘GREAT PRESSURE’
China’s classification of COVID will also be downgraded to the less strict Category B from the current top-level Category A from Jan. 8, the health authority said, meaning authorities will no longer be compelled to quarantine patients and close contacts and impose lockdowns.
But for all the excitement of a gradual return to a pre-COVID way of life, there was mounting pressure on the healthcare system, with doctors saying many hospitals are overwhelmed while funeral parlours report a surge in demand for their services.
Nurses and doctors have been asked to work while sick and retired medical workers in rural communities were being rehired to help, state media reported. Some cities have been struggling to secure supplies of anti-fever drugs.
“Some places are facing great pressure at hospital emergency wards and intensive care units,” NHC official Jiao Yahui told reporters.
While the Chinese economy is expected to see a sharp rebound later next year, it is in for a rough ride in the coming weeks and months as workers increasingly fall ill.
Many shops in Shanghai, Beijing and elsewhere have closed in recent days with staff unable to come to work, while some factories have already sent many of their workers on leave for the late January Lunar New Year holidays.
“The concern of a temporary supply chain distortion remains as the labour force is impacted by infections,” JPMorgan analysts said in a note, adding that their tracking of subway traffic in 29 cities showed that many people were restricting their movements as the virus spreads.
Data on Tuesday showed industrial profits fell 3.6% in January-November from a year earlier, versus a 3.0% drop for January-October, reflecting the toll of the anti-virus curbs in place last month, including in major manufacturing regions.
Authorities said they would step up financial support to small and private businesses in the hard-hit catering and tourism sectors.
The lifting of travel restrictions is positive for the economy, but strong caveats apply.
Japan Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said his country would require a negative COVID test for travellers from mainland China. The government would also limit airlines increasing flights to China, he said.
“International travel … will likely surge, yet it may take many more months before volumes return to the pre-pandemic level,” said Dan Wang, chief economist at Hang Seng Bank China.
“COVID is still spreading in most parts of China, greatly disrupting the normal work schedule. Loss in productivity is significant.”
Reporting by Beijing and Shanghai bureaus and Chen Lin in Singapore; Writing by Marius Zaharia and Sumeet Chatterjee; Editing by Lincoln Feast, Robert Birsel and Frank Jack Daniel
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
China will remove quarantine requirements for inbound travellers from January 8 as the country dismantles the remnants of a zero-Covid regime that closed it off from the rest of the world for almost three years.
The National Health Commission on Monday unveiled the move as part of a wider announcement that downgraded the country’s management of Covid-19 and definitively abandoned a host of other preventive measures.
The NHC said that more than 90 per cent of cases of the Omicron variant were “mild or asymptomatic”, part of a shift in tone towards coronavirus as it rages across a country where until recently very few of the 1.4bn population had contracted it.
The government, which this month also scrapped the requirement for positive cases to quarantine at central facilities, is now battling a severe winter outbreak with estimated cases spiralling into the hundreds of millions and health services under pressure.
Models have estimated the virus could lead to close to 1mn deaths, though China’s public data has ceased to reflect the situation on the ground and other zero-Covid rules such as mass testing have largely ended.
Chinese equities led rises across the Asia-Pacific region on Tuesday following the announcement, with the CSI 300 of Shanghai- and Shenzhen-listed stocks climbing 1.2 per cent. Hong Kong’s exchange was closed.
China pursued a strict zero-Covid policy shortly after the pandemic first emerged, locking down many of its largest cities and imposing quarantine requirements on foreign arrivals as part of an attempt to eliminate the virus within its borders.
Late this year, the policy began to unravel as authorities struggled to contain outbreaks in numerous cities, including the capital Beijing. Protesters took to the streets in November in a rare display of defiance against the central government’s approach, which was dramatically relaxed shortly afterwards.
Monday’s announcement signalled the end of the zero-Covid system that transformed China’s relationship with the outside world, and which for long periods successfully limited the transmission of a virus that had swept through every other advanced economy.
At one point this year, the quarantine rule required travellers to spend three weeks in a hotel room. The current policy of five days at a hotel followed by three days at home will end on January 8. Arrivals will still be required to have a negative Covid test result within 48 hours of departure and to wear masks on flights.
The sudden removal of restrictions has already put immense pressure on China’s healthcare system, especially in Beijing, which was one of the centres of the outbreak prior to the policy’s abandonment and was thought to be one of the best-prepared cities.
Recent economic data has highlighted the costs of the policy. Retail sales, a gauge of consumer spending, fell 5.9 per cent year on year in November, worse than analyst expectations, while the economy is set to miss an annual 5.5 per cent growth target that was already its lowest in decades.
But analysts have also warned over the economic and corporate costs of the virus itself as it sweeps the country, with Apple among those vulnerable to further supply chain issues.
Under zero-Covid, citizens in China were required to test every few days at booths across major cities and scan a code on their phones to enter buildings. Such practices have largely disappeared as cases multiplied rapidly, though as recently as late November individuals in Shanghai were still being taken to central quarantine because they were close contacts of positive cases at bars.
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.
Beijing CNN
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Empty streets, deserted shopping centers, and residents staying away from one another are the new normal in Beijing – but not because the city, like many Chinese ones before it, is under a “zero-Covid” lockdown.
This time, it’s because Beijing has been hit with a significant, and spreading, outbreak – a first for the Chinese capital since the beginning of the pandemic, a week after leaders eased the country’s restrictive Covid policy.
The impact of the outbreak in the city was visible in the upmarket shopping district Sanlitun on Tuesday. There, the usually bustling shops and restaurants were without customers and, in some cases, functioning on skeleton crews or offering takeout only.
Similar scenes are playing out across Beijing, as offices, shops and residential communities report being understaffed or shifting working arrangements as employees fall ill with the virus. Meanwhile, others stay home to avoid being infected.
Expert: China has failed to prepare residents when zero-Covid policy ends
One community worker told CNN that 21 of the 24 workers on her Beijing neighborhood committee office, tasked with coordinating residential matters and activities, had fallen ill in recent days.
“As our superiors are mostly infected, there’s not much work being given to us,” said the employee, Sylvia Sun. “(The usual) events, lectures, performances, parent-child activities will definitely not be held.”
Beijing, which prior to the new rules was already experiencing a small-scale outbreak, is now on the front lines of a new reality for China: not since the early days of the pandemic in Wuhan have Chinese cities dealt with an outbreak without hefty control measures in place.
But for a place that until earlier this month assiduously tracked every case, there is now no clear data on the extent of the virus’ spread.China’s new Covid rules significantly rolled back the testing requirements that once dominated daily life, and residents have instead shifted to using antigen tests at home, when available, leaving official numbers unreliable.
On Wednesday, China’s National Health Commission (NHC) gave up trying to keep track of all the new Covid cases, announcing it would no longer include asymptomatic infections in its daily count. It had previously reported these cases, albeit in a separate category from “confirmed,” or symptomatic ones.
“It is impossible to accurately grasp the actual number of asymptomatic infections,” the NHC said in a notice, citing reduced levels of official testing.
Authorities on Wednesday morning reported 2,249 symptomatic Covid cases nationally for the previous day, 20% of which were detected in the capital. Those figures are also thought to be impacted by reduced testing. CNN reporting from Beijing indicates the case count overall in the Chinese capital could be many times higher than recorded.
In a Twitter post, Beijing-based lawyer and former American Chamber of Commerce in China chairman James Zimmerman said about 90% of people in his office had Covid, up from around half a few days ago.
“Our ‘work at home’ policy is now ‘work at home if you’re well enough.’ This thing came on like a runaway freight train,” he wrote on Wednesday.
Experts have said the relatively low number of previously infected Covid-19 patients in China and the lower effectiveness of its widely-used inactivated-virus vaccines against Omicron infection – as compared with previous strains and mRNA vaccines – could enable the virus to spread rapidly.
“The current strains will spread faster in China than they have spread in other parts of the world because those other parts of the world have some immunity against infection from previous waves of earlier Omicron strains,” said University of Hong Kong chair professor of epidemiology Ben Cowling.
The extent of severe disease or death in Covid-19 outbreaks typically takes time to become clear, but there are signs of an impact on the health care system – with authorities in Beijing urging patients who are not seriously ill not to seek the help of emergency services.
The city’s major hospitals recorded 19,000 patients with flu symptoms from December 5 to 11 – more than six times that of the previous week, a health official said Monday.
The number of patients visiting fever clinics was 16 times greater on Sunday than a week prior. In China, where there isn’t a strong primary care system, visiting the hospital is common for minor illness.
So far, however, there were only 50 severe and critical cases in hospitals, most of whom had underlying health conditions, Sun Chunlan, China’s top official in charge of managing Covid, said during an inspection of Beijing’s epidemic response on Tuesday.
“At present, the number of newly infected people in Beijing is increasing rapidly, but most of them are asymptomatic and mild cases,” said Sun, who also called for more fever clinics to be set up and made assurances that supply of medicines – which have been hit by a surge in purchases in recent days – was being increased.
Prominent Shanghai physician Zhang Wenhong warned that hospitals should do everything they could to ensure that health workers were not getting infected as quickly as the people in the communities they serve. Such a situation could result in a shortage of medical staff and infections among patients, he said, according to local media reports.
Concerns about scarcity and access to medicines and care have been palpable in public discussion, including on social media. There, a Beijing reporter’s account of her time in a temporary hospital for Covid-19 treatment triggered a firestorm on social media, with a related hashtag getting more than 93 million views on China’s Twitter-like platform Weibo since Monday.
Social media users questioned why the reporter, who showed her two-bed room and access to fever medicine in a video interview posted by her employer Beijing Radio and Television Station on Sunday, received such treatment while others were struggling.
“Awesome! A young reporter gets a space in a temporary hospital and takes liquid Ibuprofen for children that is hard-to-find for parents in Beijing,” read one sarcastic comment, which got thousands of likes.
Another popular response complained that “ordinary people” stay at home with kids and elderly with high fevers.
“Could you give (her) bed to me if I called (the hospital)?” the Weibo user asked.
Amid fears of the virus, residents have rushed to buy canned peaches, following rumors the vitamin C-loaded snack could prevent or treat Covid. Chinese state media has since warned people the preserved fruit is not a Covid remedy nor a substitute for medicine.
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.
Beijing CNN
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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.
Changes continued Monday as authorities announced a deactivation of the “mobile itinerary card” health tracking function planned for the following day.
The system, which is separate from the health code scanning system still required in a reduced number of places in China, had used people’s cell phone data to track their travel history in the past 14 days in an attempt to identify those who have been to a city with zone designated “high-risk” by authorities.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Authorities recorded 8,626 Covid-19 cases across China on Sunday, down from the previous day’s count of 10,597 and from the high of more than 40,000 daily cases late last month. CNN reporting from Beijing indicates the case count in the Chinese capital could be much higher than recorded.
One note seen on a residential building in Beijing is indicative of the larger situation, reading: “Due to the severe epidemic situation in recent days, the number of employees who can come to work is seriously insufficient, and the normal operation of the apartment has been greatly affected and challenged.”
The country is only days out from a major relaxation of its longstanding zero-Covid measures, which came as a head-spinning change for many Chinese living under the government’s stringent controls and fed a longstanding narrative about the deadliness of Covid-19.
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. Some aspects of those measures, such as health code use in designated places and central quarantine of severe cases, as well as home isolation of cases, remain.
Outside experts have warned that China may be underprepared to handle the expected surge of cases, after the surprise move to lift its measures in the wake of nationwide protests against the policy, growing case numbers and rising economic costs.
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.
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.
Health authorities on Sunday ordered improvements in medical capabilities in rural areas by the end of the month.
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.
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.
“I think most people in rural China may have some misunderstandings about the virus, which may come from the overhyping of this virus by the state in the past two years. This is one of the reasons why people are so afraid,” he said, adding that he still supports the government’s careful treatment of Covid-19 during the pandemic.
There are clear efforts to tamp down on public concern about Covid-19 – and its knock-on effects, like panic buying of medications.
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 hashtag trending on China’s heavily moderated social media platform Weibo over the weekend featured a state media interview with a Beijing doctor saying people who tested positive for Covid-19 but had no or mild symptoms did not need to take 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.
BEIJING, Dec 11 (Reuters) – Beijing’s COVID-19 gloom deepened on Sunday with many shops and other businesses closed, and an expert warned of many thousands of new coronavirus cases as anger over China’s previous COVID policies gave way to worry about coping with infection.
China dropped most of its strict COVID curbs on Wednesday after unprecedented protests against them last month, but cities that were already battling with their most severe outbreaks, like Beijing, saw a sharp decrease in economic activity after rules such as regular testing were scrapped.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that many businesses have been forced to close as infected workers quarantine at home while many other people are deciding not to go out because of the higher risk of infection.
Zhong Nanshan, a prominent Chinese epidemiologist, told state media that the Omicron strain of the virus prevalent in China was highly transmissible and one infected person could spread it to as many as 18 others.
“We can see that hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands of people are infected in several major cities,” Zhong said.
With regular COVID testing of Beijing residents scrapped and reserved only for groups such as health workers, official tallies for new cases have plunged.
Health authorities reported 1,661 new infections for Beijing Saturday, down 42% from 3,974 on Dec. 6, a day before national policies were dramatically relaxed.
But evidence suggests there are many more cases in the city of nearly 22 million people where everyone seems to know someone who has caught COVID.
“In my company, the number of people who are COVID-negative is close to zero,” said one woman who works for a tourism and events firm in Beijing who asked to be identified as just Nancy.
“We realise this can’t be avoided – everyone will just have to work from home,” she said.
‘HIGHER RISK’
Sunday is a normal business day for shops in Beijing and it is usually bustling, particularly in spots like the historic Shichahai neighbourhood packed with boutiques and cafes.
But few people were out and about on Sunday and malls in Chaoyang, Beijing’s most populous district, were practically deserted with many salons, restaurants and retailers shut.
Economists widely expect China’s road to economic health to be uneven as shocks such as labour crunches due to workers calling in sick delay a full-fledged recovery for some time yet.
“The transition out of zero-COVID will eventually allow consumer spending patterns to return to normal, but a higher risk of infection will keep in-person spending depressed for months after re-opening,” Mark Williams, chief Asia economist at Capital Economics, said in a note.
China’s economy may grow 1.6% in the first quarter of 2023 from a year earlier, and 4.9% in the second, according to Capital Economics.
Epidemiologist Zhong also said it would be some months before a return to normal.
“My opinion is in the first half of next year, after March,” he said.
While China has removed most of its domestic COVID curbs, its international borders are still largely closed to foreigners, including tourists.
Inbound travellers are subjected to five days of quarantine at centralised government facilities and three additional days of self-monitoring at home.
But there are even hints that that rule could change.
Staff at the main international airport in Chengdu city, asked if quarantine rules were being eased, said that as of Saturday whether or not one needed to do the three days of home quarantine would depend on a person’s neighbourhood authorities.
(This story has been refiled to correct spelling of ‘woman’ in paragraph 9)
Reporting by Ryan Woo, Albee Zhang, Josh Arslan, Liz Lee and Judy Hua; Editing by Robert Birsel
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Analysts say China ill-prepared for big spike in cases
BEIJING/SHANGHAI, Dec 8 (Reuters) – As many Chinese embraced new freedoms on Thursday after the country dropped key parts of its tough zero-COVID regime, there was mounting concern that a virus, which had largely been kept in check, could soon run wild.
Three years into the pandemic, many in China had been itching for Beijing to start to align its rigid virus prevention measures with the rest of the world, which has largely opened up in an effort to live with the disease.
Those frustrations boiled over into widespread protests last month, the biggest show of public discontent since President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012.
Without saying it was a response to those protests, some cities and regions began relaxing COVID controls, in moves that heralded a nationwide loosening of the rules unveiled by the National Health Commission on Wednesday.
The NHC said infected people with mild symptoms can now quarantine at home and it dropped the need for testing and health status checks on mobile apps for a variety of activities including travelling around the country.
Domestic ticket sales for tourist and leisure spots have soared, according to state press, while some people took to social media to reveal they had tested positive for the virus – something that had previously carried heavy stigma in China.
Others expressed caution.
“I know COVID is not so ‘horrifying’ now, but it is still contagious and will hurt,” said one post on the Weibo platform. “The fear brought to our heart cannot be easily dissipated.”
“Too many positives!” said another Weibo user.
China reported 21,439 new local COVID-19 infections on Dec. 7, down slightly from the previous day and below a peak of 40,052 cases on Nov. 27. Cases have been trending lower recently as authorities across the country dropped testing requirements.
Various multi-million dollar projects to build testing laboratories across the country, from Shandong province in the east to Sichuan in the southwest, have been scrapped as China has cut down the need for testing, reported Shanghai government-backed news outlet The Paper.
China and Hong Kong stocks lifted Asian equity markets on Thursday, as these still cautious steps towards reopening were seen giving the world’s second largest economy a chance to regather momentum.
China’s yuan , which has also recovered some ground against the dollar in recent weeks, was little changed on Thursday.
ILL-PREPARED
China’s most populous city Shanghai, which endured one of the country’s longest and harshest lockdowns, on Thursday dropped the need for COVID tests to enter restaurants or entertainment venues.
There has been no mention of China’s “zero-COVID” policy in recent announcements, raising suspicions that the term is becoming defunct as the government gradually moves the country toward a state of living with the virus.
Top officials have also been softening their tone on the dangers posed by the virus.
But, while adopting the new more relaxed controls, some cities urged residents to remain vigilant.
“The general public should maintain a good awareness of personal protection, and be the first responsible person for their own health,” Zhengzhou, the central city home to the world’s largest iPhone factory, said in a message to residents.
It urged residents to wear masks, maintain social distancing, seek medical attention for fever and other COVID symptoms and, especially for the elderly, to get vaccinated.
Some analysts and medical experts say China is ill-prepared for a major surge in infections, partly due to low vaccination rates among vulnerable, older people and its fragile healthcare system.
“It (China) may have to pay for its procrastination on embracing a ‘living with COVID’ approach,” Nomura analysts said in a note on Thursday.
Infection rates in China are only around 0.13%, “far from the level needed for herd immunity”, Nomura said.
Feng Zijian, a former official in China’s Center for Disease Control, told the China Youth Daily that up to 60% of China’s population could be infected in the first large-scale wave before stabilising.
“Ultimately, around 80%-90% of people will be infected,” he said.
The country will probably face a large-scale outbreak in the next one to two months, state-owned magazine China Newsweek reported on Thursday citing health experts.
China’s current tally of 5,235 COVID-related deaths is a tiny fraction of its population of 1.4 billion, and extremely low by global standards. Some experts have warned that toll could rise above 1.5 million if the exit is too hasty.
But, even with the dangers, for many there is an acceptance that life must go on.
“It’s impossible to kill this virus completely, maybe just live with it and hope it will evolve into flu,” said Yan, a 22-year-old unemployed Beijing resident, who said he hoped a further opening up of China’s economy would help him find work.
Reporting by Ella Cao, Bernard Orr, Ryan Woo and Albee Zhang and the Beijing newsroom and Brenda Goh in Shanghai; Writing by John Geddie; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
WASHINGTON — “I write this letter with a heavy heart” began the communique President George H. W. Bush sent to Chinese President Deng Xiaoping on June 20, 1989, two weeks after the massacre of protesters in Tiananmen Square.
Some in Washington wanted Bush to sanction Beijing for its brutal methods, but the president wanted to ease tensions, not heighten them. “We must not let this important relationship suffer further,” Bush wrote to his Chinese counterpart. “Please help me keep it strong.”
Among the many critics of Bush’s approach was then-Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, who called for a more aggressive response that included rescinding China’s status as a most-favored trading partner, which would have been a devastating blow. In a 1991 speech from the Senate floor, Biden argued that “the United States should now cease to court and must no longer appease” the Communist Party that had ruled China for a half a century.
Now, Biden is in a position not entirely unlike the one Bush faced after Tiananmen. Recent countrywide protests against Beijing’s heavy-handed “zero-COVID” policies — rolling lockdowns, prisonlike quarantine testing, endless testing, ubiquitous QR codes — seem to present an opportunity for the president to reaffirm support for greater freedom. But doing so could alienate the government of President Xi Jinping when Washington is desperate to maintain a working relationship.
President Biden shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
“We are watching this very closely,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said during a Friday press briefing when pressed by Yahoo News. As turmoil persists in China over the coronavirus and other matters (the economy and Taiwan, above all), the question is if the Biden administration should do more to support the protesters, for whom the onerous coronavirus restrictions are but a symbol — albeit a very real one — of a society where a web of surveillance measures has heavily curbed personal freedoms.
“I see a lot of danger and temptation,” said China expert Lyle Goldstein of Defense Priorities, a Washington think tank.
The protests stem from growing public resistance to the Xi administration’s “zero-COVID” approach, which has included three years of deprivation, unpredictability, isolation and hardship. Though people across China had been growing restive for months, the recent protest began after a fire in late November killed 10 people in the city of Urumqi, where lockdown measures had led to sealing off exit routes. Pandemic restrictions meant that it took firefighters two hours to reach the blaze.
Children have died from lack of medical attention. In January, a woman in Xi’an suffered a miscarriage because a hospital would not admit her without a negative COVID test — though she had tested negative four hours before. In Shanghai, a dog was beaten to death after its owner tested positive. In Xiamen, authorities administered coronavirus tests to pond fish.
During lockdowns in Shanghai, drones flew around apartment blocks, booming out a message to residents: “Control the soul’s desire for freedom.”
People in Beijing hold white sheets of paper in protest COVID restrictions, after a vigil for the victims of a fire in Urumqi. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
Now that desire has burst into the open. November’s protests appear to have rattled Xi, who has just secured a third term as China’s leader, cementing his place in the Communist Party firmament. Just weeks later, he was facing calls to resign. Nor is the virus his sole problem. China’s housing market is beginning to crater; the economy is not growing as robustly as had been hoped.
But to change course now would be to admit error. “The health care challenge they’ve conceptualized for themselves hasn’t shifted. I don’t think the policy, as a whole, will go away anywhere soon,” said Manoj Kewalramani, an India-based China expert and author of “Smokeless War: China’s Quest for Geopolitical Dominance.”
Just as in the United States, the coronavirus appears to have exposed latent social and political tensions. Even if authorities manage to suppress protests in the coming days, there is little doubt that those tensions will remain, presenting Xi with an ongoing challenge.
“China’s Struggle With Covid Is Just Beginning” said the telling headline of a New York Times guest essay by Yanzhong Huang, a U.S.-based expert in Chinese health policy.
Beijing has made tweaks to its zero-COVID policy in recent days, but lifting lockdowns could have risks of its own, especially in a country with low vaccination rates. Nor can the Communist Party simply dispense with a complex biosecurity regime it has argued is a public health necessity. Pressure will be especially high on local officials, who have been blamed for being heavy-handed. Now they could also face criticism from Beijing if infection and hospitalizations begin to rise.
Police officers block Wulumuqi street, named for Urumqi in Mandarin, in Shanghai. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)
The upcoming Lunar New Year celebrations will present an entirely new challenge come late January.
“This matters so much more than any other issue,” China analyst Isaac Stone Fish told Yahoo News in a telephone interview. Some even think that the protests could be, as the Chinese proverb goes, a spark to start a prairie fire, toppling a communist regime that only weeks ago appeared impregnable.
In a potentially significant coincidence, the protests began right after the death of Jiang Zemin, who led China in the 1990s and was seen as a relatively liberal figure. Shows of mourning for Jiang could merge with the anti-lockdown protests, some of which have included calls for Xi to step down, presenting a truly unpredictable dynamic. In 1989, it was the death of reformist Hu Yaobang that sparked the protests that culminated in the killings at Tiananmen.
In his speech to the 20th Communist Party Congress in October, Xi celebrated the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation on all fronts.” But the recent protests quickly laid bare the degree to which the laobaixing — that is, ordinary people without apartments in Shanghai skyscrapers, without children at Ivy League schools or without connections to powerful officials in Beijing — are suffering.
In Washington, the anti-lockdown protests have presented a fresh challenge to the Biden administration, which is not only funding Ukraine’s resistance to Russia but also watching the ongoing protests in Iran where — as in China — a once-unshakable government suddenly finds itself embattled.
Now the White House is faced with a crisis that has engulfed its primary geopolitical foe, mere weeks after President Biden met with Xi, whom he has known for decades. During their meeting, which took place on the sidelines of G20, a summit of the world’s 20 largest economies, Biden promised to vigorously compete with China economically — but to also keep that competition from lapsing into military conflict, especially when it comes to the contested island of Taiwan.
A temporarily installed camera points at a door to an apartment building where residents are under lockdown as outbreaks of COVID-19 continue in Beijing. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)
“I don’t think the U.S. should compromise. We cannot compromise our principles,” Chinese dissident Jianli Yang, who participated in the Tiananmen protests and now lives in Washington, D.C., told Yahoo News.
“At the same time, we have to be realistic.”
So far, the protests have only deepened the administration’s conviction that moral clarity on universal human rights can be voiced without fostering a charged ideological confrontation with Beijing. “You have to hold both of those things,” a senior White House official told Yahoo News, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Defense analyst Goldstein agrees. “Overt shows of sympathy are not helpful,” he said, praising Biden’s cautious approach as “quite wise,” since it deprives Beijing of an opportunity to turn the U.S. into a scapegoat for troubles of its own making. During the 2019 democracy protests in Hong Kong, China accused the United States of exercising a “black hand” to foment anti-Beijing sentiment. The American flags brandished by pro-democracy demonstrators, Goldstein said, were “like waving a red flag in front of a bull.”
Yet taking a middle path is also bound to cause frustration of its own, for both hawks and doves in the foreign policy establishment.
“From China to Iran to Ukraine, it’s clear that people are fed up with dictators and demand freedom,” Uriel Epshtein, executive director of the Renew Democracy Initiative, told Yahoo News in a text message. “Bravery is contagious, and whether it comes from Iranian and Chinese protesters or from Ukrainian freedom fighters, I hope the U.S. government catches some.”
But what does bravery look like in confronting an insular nuclear superpower that has long bristled at lectures from the West on human rights and territorial sovereignty?
A demonstrator in Tokyo holds a placard during a solidarity protest against China’s COVID-19 lockdowns. (Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)
“Let it be. Let things evolve on their own,” said Kewalramani, who told Yahoo News that he believes no argument against zero-COVID proffered by Western governments is as powerful as the ire many Chinese feel toward their own leader. “Their failures have mobilized their population more than anything anyone else could have done.”
Xi is thus caught in a bind that is unlikely to resolve itself anytime soon — and is far more likely to increase the pressure on him and his small coterie of advisers. “Premature easing of policy could lead to an outbreak of infection and deaths, especially in a population that remains under-vaccinated and that has had relatively little exposure to the COVID pandemic,” argues China expert George Magnus of Oxford. “Repressive lockdowns, on the other hand, will surely fuel further unrest.”
For all the depredations zero-COVID has wrought, the argument in favor of treating the coronavirus with deliberate seriousness is not without merit. More than a million people in the United States have died from COVID-19, and while the official Chinese figure of about 5,000 pandemic fatalities is almost certainly inaccurate, the restrictive lockdowns have doubtlessly saved lives in a country that skews demographically toward the elderly.
Not unlike Russia, China sees Western criticisms as fundamentally hypocritical, not motivated by concerns for human rights but by the desire to weaken a formidable geopolitical foe.
President Biden boards Air Force One ahead of a departure from Boston Logan International Airport. (Nathan Posner/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
A similar dynamic could develop if the U.S. endorses the anti-lockdown protests.
“There are already signs that the PRC is charging that the U.S. is behind the protests, which is nonsense, but it underscores why the U.S. should not be out front as cheerleader for the protester,” said China expert Bonnie S. Glaser of the German Marshall Fund, using an abbreviation for the People’s Republic of China.
Last week, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian was questioned during a press briefing about the assault of a BBC journalist who was covering protests in Shanghai. The journalist, Edward Lawrence, was “beaten and kicked by the police,” the BBC said.
Zhao was not especially contrite.
“I also have some questions for the U.K.,” he replied. “First, how does the British government handle domestic protesters? In 2020, the U.K. police arrested more than 150 people when Londoners took to the street to protest against COVID lockdown.”
Zhao then enumerated other protests that had been suppressed by British authorities. He could have just as easily made similar claims about how the United States responded in 2020 to anti-lockdown and social justice protests. In both cases, law enforcement agencies were accused of excesses.
Subverting another nation’s public health response would seem to be well out of bounds of American foreign policy. Still, the images from China cannot be ignored, especially by an administration that has sought to restore the role of the U.S. as a global force for good.
Protesters in Hong Kong hold up blank white papers during a commemoration for victims of the Urumqi fire. (Kanis Leung/AP)
The scenes of brave Chinese protesters facing off against a government with the most sophisticated surveillance tools in the world, and virtually no accountability, fit with almost painful accuracy into Biden’s framework. Authorities in Beijing have even censored footage of the World Cup, now taking place in Qatar, so that Chinese citizens are not agitated by the sight of soccer stadiums filled with thousands of maskless fans.
The Biden administration has been cautious, confident that it can “universalize” its pro-democracy message, the senior White House official explained, without unduly offending Xi.
“Our message to peaceful protesters around the world is the same and consistent: People should be allowed the right to assemble and to peacefully protest policies or laws or dictates that they take issue with,” National Security Council spokesman Kirby said last Monday, as images of the protests dominated cable news and social media.
State power is exercised so ruthlessly on ordinary Chinese people that there is little doubt that the Communist Party will ultimately prevail. Supporting protesters today could result in frayed Washington-Beijing relations tomorrow.
“I don’t think the protests are going to sustain,” said China analyst Isaac Stone Fish. But, he adds, failing to bolster the protests as they are taking place could have consequences in the future, if Beijing concludes that Washington is afraid of confrontation. “The weaker we appear, the easier it will be to be walked over.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping holds talks with Charles Michel, the visiting president of the European Council, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. (Zhang Ling/Xinhua via Getty Images)
Conservatives have charged Biden with a weak foreign policy — despite his administration devoting billions to support Ukraine in repelling the Kremlin — and they have called for a broader confrontation.
“Congress and the White House should give clear and unequivocal moral support to the protesters,” said Steve Yates, a China expert at the conservative America First Policy Institute, in a statement. “The White House should announce strategic decoupling from China in which we deepen the previous administration’s efforts to end our dependence on China.”
But most experts believe that such a move would be a grave mistake, allowing Xi to deflect some of the blame directed his way toward the United States.
“Chinese are angry with other Chinese,” Goldstein of Defense Priorities said. “Honestly, that’s best for all involved — and for the bipartisan relationship.” He said that the best option for the United States may be an unsatisfying one: to simply sit back and wait.
