Tag: Quarantines

She Was Supposed to Be China’s Future. After ‘Zero Covid,’ She Wants to Leave.

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[MUSIC] lulu garcia-navarro From New York Times Opinion, I’m Lulu Garcia-Navarro, and this is “First Person.” When Chinese President Xi Jinping took office a decade ago, he started talking about what he called the Chinese dream. xi jinping [SPEAKING CHINESE] lulu garcia-navarro The Chinese dream, he explained, meant Chinese people would find prosperity and economic opportunity in China under the Communist system. And the years that followed delivered on that promise. But Covid has put that dream in peril. Covid zero has shaken people’s faith in the government, and the…

Reversing ‘Zero Covid’

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In a stunning turn of events, China announced a broad rollback of its “zero Covid” policies today, an implicit concession to public protests last month that posed the most widespread challenge to the ruling Communist Party in decades. The move seems to be an attempt at a tactical, face-saving retreat for China’s leader, Xi Jinping, without acknowledgment that widespread opposition and mounting economic difficulties forced his hand. China’s state media depicted the move as a planned transition after the zero-tolerance approach secured a victory over a virus that has now…

China’s ‘Zero Covid’ Policy Changes, Explained

Chin@Strategy

The Chinese government on Wednesday unveiled a broad easing of its strict “zero Covid” policy, after an extraordinary outburst of discontent in mass street protests a week ago. The changes do not dismantle the policy, but they represent a loosening of measures that have dragged down the economy by disrupting daily life for hundreds of millions of people, forcing many small businesses to close and sending youth unemployment to a record high. Here are the highlights from the announcement. Testing The new rules move China away from the use of…

China Stems Wave of Protest, but Ripples of Resistance Remain

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In central China, students chanted demands for more transparency about Covid rules, while avoiding the bold slogans that riled the Communist Party a week earlier. In Shanghai, residents successfully negotiated with the local authorities to stop a lockdown of their neighborhood. And despite pressure from officials, a team of volunteer lawyers across China, committed to defending the right of citizens to voice their views, fielded anxious calls from protesters. The recent wave of demonstrations that washed over China was prompted by frustration about pandemic restrictions, but the unrest also sometimes…

The Chinese Dream, Denied

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The narrow alleyways of Haizhu district have long beckoned to China’s strivers, people like Xie Pan, a textile worker from a mountainous tea-growing area in central China. Home to one of the country’s biggest fabric markets, Haizhu houses worker dormitories and textile factories in brightly colored buildings stacked so close that neighbors can shake hands out their windows. Once a smattering of rural villages, the area became a manufacturing hub as China opened its economy decades ago. The government had promised to step back and let people unleash their ambitions,…

After Fanning Covid Fears, China Must Now Try to Allay Them

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For nearly three years, the Chinese government deployed its considerable propaganda apparatus to fan fears about Covid to justify large-scale quarantines, frequent mass testing and the tracking of more than a billion people. As the authorities now shift their approach to the pandemic, they face the task of downplaying those fears. Until the past week, during which there were rallies voicing extraordinary public opposition to the stringent “zero Covid” rules, government officials and state media were still emphasizing the most ominous medical news about the pandemic. There were countless stories…

iPhone Factory Protest Challenges China’s ‘Zero Covid’ Rules

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In an iPhone factory in central China, thousands of workers clashed with riot police and tore down barricades. In the southern city of Guangzhou, protesters broke out of locked-down buildings to confront health workers and ransack food provisions. And online, many Chinese raged at the authorities after the death of a 4-month-old girl, whose father said access to medical treatment was delayed because of Covid restrictions. As China’s harsh Covid rules extend deep into their third year, there are growing signs of discontent across the country. For China’s leader, Xi…

What Videos Show About the Extremes of China’s ‘Zero Covid’ Policy

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It has been weeks since Gao Mingjun, a 24-year-old resident of the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou, saw her mother. As coronavirus cases began spreading in Zhengzhou last month, Ms. Gao’s mother, who works and lives at the city’s Foxconn industrial park — home to the world’s biggest iPhone assembly plant — told her daughter that she was barred from leaving the compound. Then, one night, Ms. Gao’s mother was ordered into a quarantine center about four miles away. She and dozens of other groggy workers were made to wait…

No, Capitalism and the Internet Will Not Free China’s People

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When I ran afoul of authorities in 2011 after criticizing the government, the police threatened me with an “ugly death” and said they would tell all of China about the absurd allegations they leveled, like tax evasion, to discredit me. I asked if China’s people would believe their lies. Ninety percent will, an officer told me. In China, where all “truth” comes from the party, he may have been right. Three years later, at an art exhibition in Shanghai, pressure from local government officials led to the abrupt removal of…

In China, Living Not ‘With Covid,’ but With ‘Zero Covid’

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SHENZHEN, China — The signs of a looming lockdown in Shenzhen, China, had been building for a while. The city had been logging a few coronavirus infections for days. Daily Covid tests were required to go pretty much anywhere. Individual buildings had been sealed off. So when a hotel employee woke me up a little after 7 a.m. to explain that we were not allowed to step outside for four days, my initial disorientation quickly turned to resignation. Of course this happened. I live in China. As the rest of…