BEIJING — China announced Wednesday a nationwide loosening of
its hardline COVID-19 restrictions that had hammered the world’s second biggest
economy and ignited rare protests against the ruling Communist Party.اضافة اعلان
The new rules are a major relaxation of President Xi Jinping’s signature zero-COVID policy, three years into the pandemic and long
after the rest of the world had largely learnt to live with the virus.
However, with vaccination rates remaining low among
China’s elderly and a health system still regarded as ill-prepared for a wave
of infections, Xi has not abandoned travel curbs and heavy testing completely.
Under the new guidelines announced by the National
Health Commission, the frequency and scope of PCR testing — long a tedious
mainstay of life in zero-COVID China — will be reduced.
Lockdowns — a major source of public anger — will
also be limited to as small a scope as is feasible, and authorities are
required to free areas that show no positive cases after five days.
People with non-severe COVID infections can isolate
at home instead of centralized government facilities.
And people will no longer be required to show a
green health code on their phone to enter public buildings and spaces, except
for “nursing homes, medical institutions, kindergartens, middle and high
schools”.
China will also accelerate vaccination of the
elderly, the health commission said, long seen as a major obstacle to the
relaxation of zero-COVID.
Beijing said the new rules would serve to “correct
pronounced problems faced by pandemic prevention and control currently”.
Past policy had “received strong response from the
public”, National Health Commission expert Li Bin told a press conference
Wednesday.
‘It’s about time’
Until recently, Xi and the
Chinese propaganda apparatus had hailed zero-COVID as a triumph of communist
rule that had kept deaths low compared with democratic countries such as the
US.
But rare demonstrations against the strategy broke
out across China late last month, with people railing against the restrictions.
The protests expanded into calls for more political
freedoms, with some even calling for Xi to resign, turning into the most
widespread opposition to communist rule since the 1989 democracy uprising that
the military crushed.
All the while, a stream of data showed the massive
impacts of zero-COVID on China’s economy — with spill on effects for the world.
The government released data just before Wednesday’s
announcement stating imports in November had fallen 10.6 percent year-on-year,
the biggest drop since May 2020. Exports fell 8.7 percent over the same period.
Authorities quickly cracked down on the
demonstrations, sending security forces into the streets and deploying its
high-tech surveillance system against protesters.
However they also began easing restrictions, with
some Chinese cities tentatively rolling back mass testing and curbs on
movement.
And once dominated by coverage of the dangers of the
virus and scenes of pandemic chaos abroad, China’s state-run media dramatically
shifted tone to support a moving away from zero-COVID.
There were immediate signs of relief in China
following Wednesday’s announcement.
“It’s about time to open up, it’s been three years
already, we should open up fully,” one Beijing resident who asked to remain
anonymous told AFP.
“People need to work and eat, you can’t just tell
people not to leave their homes anymore,” they added.
“If people are worried now, they should stay home
and avoid coming out, other people need to work and get on with life.”
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