China postpones Asian Games as it continues crackdown on doubters
Beijing residents fretted on Friday over tightening Covid curbs in its biggest district and dozens of new cases reported daily as China's leaders reiterated their resolve to battle the virus and threatened action against critics of their strict measures.
Incurring a heavy economic cost and facing rare public criticism on its tightly-policed internet, China is increasingly out of step with the rest of the world where Covid restrictions are being abandoned and vaccines relied on to protect people.
Internationally, industry organisations have complained that China's 'zero- COVID' policies have global economic reverberations. At home, the population worries about painful, long-term restrictions.
In the latest ratcheting up of restrictions, Beijing authorities on Friday said all non-essential services in its biggest district Chaoyang, home to embassies and large offices, would shut. Mass testing will also resume in at least four districts over the weekend.
Meanwhile, organisers of the Asian Games, scheduled to take place in September in Hangzhou, southwest Shanghai, postponed them until 2023, because of Covid, defying a global sporting calendar that has largely returned to normal.
The Chinese capital is racing to avoid an explosion in cases like the one that forced the commercial hub of Shanghai into an almost complete lockdown for more than a month, taking a financial and psychological toll on its residents.
"We will try to cooperate," said 42-year-old Beijing finance worker Hu, giving only her surname.
"But I also hope that the government can introduce some policies that will not affect the overall life of citizens.
After all, we all have mortgages and car loans." After a meeting of the highest decision-making body, the Standing Committee of the Communist Party's politburo, state media reported late on Thursday that China would fight any comment or action that distorted, doubted or repudiated its Covid policy.
Relaxing Covid controls, which are in place in dozens of cities across the world's secondlargest economy and affecting hundreds of millions of people, would lead to large-scale infections, it warned.
On Friday, the Communist Party's official People's Daily newspaper hit out in an editorial against accusations China's COVID policy was disrupting the global economy and trade.