A day after China’s ruling Communist Party announced a sweeping rollback of the “zero COVID” restrictions that had choked the economy and transformed life in the country, the propaganda apparatus on Thursday began the daunting task of promoting a bold revision of history.
While the rest of the world concluded months ago that the coronavirus was becoming less deadly, Beijing presented the development as fresh news to explain its abrupt decision to undo lockdowns that sparked widespread protests. In doing so, he also made a high-stakes bet that vaccination rates in China are, or soon will be, sufficient to prevent a serious outbreak that overwhelms the country’s hospitals.
“The pathogenicity of the omicron strain of the coronavirus has now been significantly reduced,” Wang Guiqiang, a health expert, told reporters in Beijing at a news conference on Thursday that was widely covered by state media. “Everyone should treat him with a normal heart; there is no need to be nervous or even fearful.”
State television also trumpeted claims that more than 90% of cases of the one-year omicron variant are mild or asymptomatic, without explaining the sudden adoption of such conclusions. The health commission released details on how residents should quarantine at home if they test positive, rather than in hospitals. The workers began to tear down the test booths. Officials detailed new limits on when and how lockdowns can be imposed by local authorities.
There were scenes of both relief and confusion at the easing of lockdowns. Rush hour traffic returned to the long empty roads of Beijing. People posted selfies marking their return to work and dining at restaurants. But any celebratory mood seemed clouded by worries of getting sick, and people were rushing to order home COVID test kits and fever medicine.
Even China’s leader, Xi Jinping, seemed to distance himself from the dismantling of his signature policy and traveled to the Gulf for several regional summits, one of the few trips abroad he has taken during the pandemic. Xi’s travels were featured on the front page of the People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, where there was no mention of “zero COVID” or its review.
For months, commentary from state media and experts had exaggerated the omicron threat to justify its strict policy of lockdowns, mass quarantines and tests that had disrupted daily life.
“They knew about the severity of the omicron, but they didn’t want to tell people the truth. Instead, they started exaggerating the severity of the disease, the virulence, to justify the ‘zero COVID’ policy,” said Yanzhong Huang, a global health specialist and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“Suddenly you have all these experts coming out to justify why this loosening of policy is necessary,” he said, referring to health officials whose messaging on the pandemic has changed dramatically in recent days.
China’s jarring and whiplash-inducing narrative shift around omicron points to the challenge for the party as it tries to avoid letting this week’s sudden abandonment of “COVID zero” be interpreted as an admission of failure and a stain on Xi’s legacy. For years, China has pushed a triumphant narrative about its top-down, heavy-handed approach to eradicating infections, saying only the Communist Party, under Xi’s leadership, had the will and ability to save lives.
The changes the government announced Wednesday, which would limit lockdowns and eliminate mandatory mass quarantines and hospitalization for most cases, amounted to a reversal of “zero COVID” in the face of public opposition and mounting economic costs. But the party is deploying the full force of its propaganda and censorship apparatus to present the transition as part of the plan all the time.
More importantly, state media appeared to be distancing Xi’s policy shift, in stark contrast to the summer of 2020 when they highlighted Xi’s declaration of victory against COVID as restrictions curbed infections. Even the term “zero COVID” has suddenly disappeared from official statements and comments from officials.
Opening China to a highly transmissible outbreak is not the success Beijing had hoped to achieve, said Dali Yang, a professor at the University of Chicago. “They realized that this is not something worth celebrating,” he said. “The reopening has taken too long and praising Xi may well backfire.”
Cases have risen, with the country reporting an average of around 30,000 cases a day in the past week, though with reduced testing, such counts are expected to soon result in an undercount. International experts have warned that China’s strategy of relying heavily on rapid lockdowns and contact tracing, at the expense of ramping up vaccinations, has put the country at risk of overwhelming the chronically underserved public health care system. funds and staff. Compared to many other Asian countries, China has fewer intensive care beds per capita.
Images and videos posted on Chinese social media and state media showed the rapid dismantling of some of the most feared or despised features of “zero COVID” checks across the country. Workers took signs indicating mass testing sites and tore down signs restricting subway use to those who tested negative for COVID. Prefab makeshift hospitals, which Beijing once touted as proof of its mobilization capacity but quickly became symbols of the state’s power to detain citizens, have been demolished.
Internet censors seemed to be trying to tread a fine line. Xiao Qiang, a censorship expert at the University of California, Berkeley, said that since the new policy was announced Wednesday, censors have tried to delete posts and comments calling for adherence to strict “zero COVID” measures or supporting the complete removal of restrictions.
“In fact, the government has done a 180-degree turn, but it doesn’t allow the public to call it a total failure of the previous policy,” Xiao said. “Basically, he also wants to control the narrative that what the government did was right, and that the new policy change is not directly the result of the protests.”
For the party, the strategy of downplaying the threat of the virus is a gamble because it can be hard to predict how China will fare as the virus continues to spread unabated. But health officials are concerned about a surge in cases overwhelming the country’s hospitals, especially after ordering for nearly three years that anyone who tests positive must be admitted.
In a speech reported by the China Youth Daily, a Communist Party newspaper, on Wednesday, a former infectious disease official predicted that up to 90% of the population could eventually become infected with COVID. Feng Zijian, former deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said officials must quickly speed up vaccinations, especially in the elderly, and prepare the health care system for the influx of patients.
Spreading the message that most cases will not require any medical treatment could help hospitals with triage. On Thursday, China’s national health commission issued a plan allowing Chinese to use store-bought rapid antigen tests instead of relying on widely criticized government-administered PCR tests. Residents who have tested positive with self-administered tests could opt to self-quarantine at home, according to the plan.
Many ordinary Chinese appeared to be bracing for a widespread outbreak. On Weibo, a popular Chinese social media platform, people shared home quarantine tips. Residents began hoarding medicines and pain relievers, including ibuprofen and paracetamol, apparently driving up prices in stores.
At the same time, many Chinese were quick to point out the party’s abrupt change in policy. On Weibo, users mocked the experts who had been recruited to justify the decisions of the central leadership. Chief among these was Liang Wannian, the chief scientist working with the World Health Organization on studies of the origins of the pandemic. (For months, Liang talked about the lethality of the omicron variant, but told reporters on Wednesday that the virus “has now become milder.”)
“People persisted in popularizing science among experts,” wrote a widely circulated post on social media. “Experts finally realized that COVID is less serious than the flu.”
Hazel Liu, a Beijing resident who participated in a recent protest, saw the relaxation as proof that the public pressure campaign had worked. She was glad to see malls in the city lift rules requiring customers to show negative proof before entering. “I hope I can travel abroad in 2023!” she added.
In many ways, the new policy was also a vindication of health experts and others who had previously been silenced or ignored for questioning China’s zero-tolerance approach.
When Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, described China’s “zero COVID” policy as unsustainable in May, his comments were censored on the Chinese internet and denounced as “irresponsible” by a Foreign Ministry spokesman. .
Chinese social media users shared articles reminiscent of Zhang Wenhong, an epidemiologist in Shanghai and an early proponent of easing. Shortly after Shanghai entered a brutal 60-day lockdown in April, Zhang and other authors published a study on the weakening of the lethality of the omicron variant that was widely criticized.
On Thursday, an article titled: “Mistaken criticism of Zhang Wenhong and ‘living with the virus’ cost us a year” was widely shared. The article was later removed.
Many Chinese returned to Dr. Li Wenliang, the first victim of pandemic-related censorship, who died in early 2020 after contracting the coronavirus. Users flocked to Li’s Weibo page to leave heartfelt notes of solidarity. “Dr. Li, you are finally done. one user wrote. “We miss you. Thanks for your hard work.”
