Spring Festival trips shadowed by excessive epidemic prevention
Some local govts add further restrictions on top of central policy
While China’s central government has released guidelines for the management of flows of population amid the Spring Festival to reduce epidemic risks, local governments in a few places are adding further restrictions or adopting onesize- fits- all approaches in implementing the policy, sparking public criticism as being dogmatic with poor governance.
Observers said that although these are just isolated cases, they will still potentially provoke social conflicts and tarnish the image of the government, calling on grassroots officials to beef up governance capabilities.
The notice released by Longyao county, North China’s Hebei Province, was dubbed as the “strictest.” It said in a “frank” and “down to earth” tone, “just tell your family members not to come back” for the Spring Festival.
Hebei Province was hit hard by outbreaks since December last year, having reported 661 confirmed COVID- 19 cases as of Wednesday.
Longyao’s notice said that anyone from high- or mediumrisk regions shall be quarantined in designated places for 21 days and if they are from low- risk regions, they must have nucleic acid tests, introduction letters and face 14 days of home quarantine. A community in Longyao is labeled as a medium- risk region for the coronavirus.
Yu Shaoxiang, chief research fellow with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that obviously it would be much easier to ask all returnees to hand over negative nucleic acid tests, regardless of where they are from, or simply ban them from returning, than to try to impose different regulations for different risk levels, Yu said.
Twisting central policies is not the norm, Yu stressed. Most provinces and cities across China are able to implement the policy properly.
A Chinese official working at a county- level government reached by the Global Times admitted the existence of supremacism among some grassroots governments.
“In order to limit the risks of any potential outbreak, some grassroots governments would adopt a one- size- fits- all approach in implementing the policy because they lack the capability to grasp the meaning of it, resulting in twisting of central policies,” he said.
In order to limit the risks of causing any epidemic, some grassroots governments would adopt a one- size- fits- all approach in implementing the policy, said a Chinese official working at a countylevel government