Apr 27th 2022 BEIJING IF CHINA’S PUBLIC-HEALTH policies were decided by the people of Shanghai, the country would abandon the “zero-covid” strategy, which uses mass testing and strict lockdowns to crush the virus. The city’s 25m residents, among whom are some of China’s richest and most influential people, have complained loudly about the grim weeks-long lockdown they have endured. But Beijing is where China’s covid strategy is devised—and the mood is quite different in the capital. A brief flurry of panic-buying notwithstanding, Beijing’s 22m residents responded with a mixture of…
Day: April 26, 2022
Your Wednesday Briefing: Beijing’s Mass Testing Plan
Good morning. We’re covering Beijing’s scramble to quash the Omicron variant, Germany’s pivot to supplying Ukraine with heavy weaponry and a brownface controversy roiling Hong Kong. Mass testing in Beijing Faced with a growing number of coronavirus infections across Beijing, city officials are trying to test most of the Chinese capital’s 22 million residents in the hope of avoiding the pain of imposing a citywide lockdown like in Shanghai. Beijing is ordering mass testing across the city more quickly than in Shanghai, where officials started testing on a similar scale…
Beijing Enforces Partial Lockdowns, Expands COVID-19 Mass Testing
Advertisement Workers put up fencing and police restricted who could leave a locked-down area in Beijing on Tuesday as authorities in the Chinese capital stepped up efforts to prevent a major COVID-19 outbreak like the one that has all but shut down the city of Shanghai. People lined up for throat swabs across much of Beijing as mass testing was expanded to 11 of the city’s 16 districts. Another 22 cases were found in the last 24 hours, Beijing health officials said at a late afternoon news conference, bringing the…
Shanghai Lockdown Diary: The Quest for Food Brings an Apartment Complex Together
Advertisement This is second entry in John Van Fleet’s Shanghai Lockdown Diary in The Diplomat. Read the first here. Xujiahui, Shanghai, April 26: We knew almost no one in this high-rise of 31 stories, 90 units, and more than 200 people, until March 29, the first day of our building’s lockdown. (We got a head start on the rest of the city because they found a case in our building – lucky us.) Until then, few neighbors said more than to each other than the occasional “ni hao” exchanged in…
Italian woman, 72, to walk Marco Polo’s path from Venice to Beijing
A 72-year-old Italian woman has embarked on an epic journey between Venice and Beijing by foot, following the path of the legendary merchant Marco Polo along the ancient Silk Road trade route. Vienna Cammarota left Venice, birthplace of Polo, on Tuesday, and will cover about 13,670 miles (22,000km) as she walks through 15 countries, with the aim of arriving in Beijing in December 2025. Cammarota has been an avid walker for more than 30 years and previously ventured across Tibet, Palestine, Israel, Patagonia and Madagascar on foot. Her most recent…
Four killed by female suicide bomber near China institute in Pakistan
A suicide bomber from a Pakistani separatist group has killed four people, including three Chinese nationals, in an attack on a minibus carrying staff from the Confucius Institute at Karachi University. The Baloch Liberation Army – one of several groups fighting for independence in Pakistan’s biggest province – claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s bombing, saying it was the first suicide attack by a female assailant. Chinese targets have regularly been attacked by separatists from Balochistan, where Beijing is involved in huge infrastructure projects as part of its belt and road initiative.…
The China-Solomon Islands security pact and why it has raised alarm
Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare (left) and China’s ambassador to the Solomon Islands Li Ming at the opening ceremony of a China-financed national stadium complex in Honiara on Friday. The stadium complex, worth a reported US$53 million, will host the 2023 Pacific Games, a first for the Solomons. Photo: AFP South China Morning Post
China’s Covid Strategy: Test 20 Million in Beijing Amid Lockdown Fears
Beijing officials urged residents to work remotely, and they suspended large-scale gatherings such as cultural performances, sports events and exhibitions. Some streets in Chaoyang, where most of the cases have been detected so far, were uncommonly quiet. Officials had earlier identified a small area elsewhere in the district, covering about a square mile of southern Chaoyang, where they ordered residents locked down or discouraged them from leaving their homes. Many Chaoyang residents appeared to be heeding such advice, with sidewalk eateries and shops left with no patrons. Concerns about a…
Xinjiang: UN team in China ahead of visit by human rights chief
A United Nations team is in China ahead of a visit to Xinjiang, in preparation for the human rights commissioner’s long sought inspection expected next month. The delegation was quarantining in Guangzhou, the South China Morning Post reported, before heading to Xinjiang. The five-member team was there “at the invitation of the [Chinese] government” said Liz Throssell, UN human rights spokesperson, the Post reported. The UN office of the human rights commissioner (OHRC) has been negotiating with the Chinese government since 2018 seeking to visit Xinjiang with “unfettered, meaningful access”…