Govt adamant on ‘zero-Covid’
Residents of Beijing fretted yesterday over dozens of new Covid-19 cases reported daily and over the possibility of more restrictions on movements as China’s leaders threatened action against critics of their zeroCovid policy.
Incurring a heavy economic cost and facing rare public criticism on its tightly controlled 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 Covid curbs have global economic reverberations. At home, the population worries about painful, longterm restrictions.
The 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 significant 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.”
Shi Wei, a retiree in the capital, said people around him seemed “easily irritable”.
“When the virus can change people’s way of life at any time, people are more susceptible to mood swings.”
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 were being imposed in dozens of cities across the world’s second-largest economy and affecting hundreds of millions of people, would lead to large-scale infections, it warned.
Despite official announcements that the latest outbreak was under control, most of the city’s 25 million people are unable to leave their housing compounds or are only allowed out briefly.