Zero-Covid strategy will ‘stand the test of time’ in Shanghai, Xi says
President also warns officials against wavering in strict virus control policy
President Xi Jinping has spoken out for the first time on China’s handling of the Covid-19 outbreak in Shanghai, saying it “will stand the test of time”, and pledged to fight any attempt to “distort, question and challenge” the country’s policies.
Chairing the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee meeting, the highest decision-making body in China, Xi gave a speech telling officials and party cadres to stand firm and not waver.
He said China would prevail in the fight against Covid-19 in Shanghai just as it did in Wuhan, state broadcaster CCTV reported last night.
Shanghai’s 25 million residents have been locked down for more than a month amid a surge in cases, becoming the epicentre of China’s worst Covid-19 outbreak since it first began two years ago.
The local authorities in Beijing have closed public transport routes, told people to work from home and ordered mass testing in an effort to stop the capital suffering the same fate.
China is one of the few countries to have maintained a version of the zero-Covid policy as most of the world has begun to live with the virus.
While the policy helped China keep its caseload down early in the pandemic, it has been less effective against the highly transmissible but less deadly Omicron variant.
“We must be firm in overcoming thoughts of indifference and self-righteous thinking, and not underestimate the epidemic,” a statement issued after the meeting said. “We must keep a clear head and unwaveringly adhere to the general policy of dynamic zero-Covid. We must struggle against speech and acts that distort, question or challenge our country’s anti-epidemic guidelines and policy.”
The statement said Covid-19 cases were still at a high level and the virus was still mutating, suggesting that there was “great uncertainty” in how the pandemic would develop.
“China is a country with a large population and a large ageing population,” it said.
“With regional development unbalanced and medical resources lacking, relaxing control measures will cause a large outbreak, many cases of serious illness and deaths. Socioeconomic development and the health and safety of people will be seriously affected.”
The top leadership has repeatedly said it would press on with its strict policy, which seeks to stamp out infections whenever they arise, but the meeting yesterday was the first that discussed Shanghai’s outbreak.
China’s leaders are also keen to keep Covid-19 at bay in the build-up to the party congress later this year, where Xi is expected to gain an unprecedented third term.
But the Shanghai lockdown has prompted an outcry as residents have complained of food shortages, difficulty getting medical treatment and fences being set up outside residential buildings to keep people in.
Nearly 600,000 people in the city have tested positive since March and close to 19 million residents were still under lockdown yesterday.
After more than a month of being forced to stay at home, cases have begun to fall.
The statement said “the great defensive battle of Shanghai” had gained some early results.
It also said: “Party committees and governments at all levels and all sectors of society should align their thoughts and actions to the party Central Committee’s strategy. They must consciously maintain a high consistency with the Central Committee in ideology, politics and action.”
The read-out for the meeting also said the Politburo Standing Committee studied “other matters” – usually a veiled reference to potential personnel changes.
The future of Shanghai’s party chief Li Qiang, a member of the wider Politburo, has been in doubt since the city, China’s richest and considered to be one of its best governed, was hit by a surge in cases.
A resident looks out from their window in Shanghai’s Jing’an district yesterday as the city learned it will remain under strict antivirus lockdown measures after new data showed 34 new cases in non-quarantined areas in the previous 24 hours.
Wang Hesheng, vice-minister of the National Health Commission, told a meeting of local officials that hidden transmission chains were still an “enemy within”.
“The biggest consensus is that determined efforts must be made to avoid a rebound in new cases,” he said, according to
Shanghai Television. “When a new case is detected in a precautionary zone, or in a hospital or among the certain high-risk people, tracking and tracing must be conducted swiftly.”
The 34 new cases represented progress, compared with 63 such cases reported a day earlier. Total new cases across the city fell for the 12th consecutive day, dropping to 4,651 – the lowest total since the city went into lockdown on April 1. Symptomatic cases inched up 0.4 per cent to 261. Thirteen patients died. Total cases since the outbreak started in the city on March 1 topped 592,000.