Tag: Wuhan (China)

China Moves to Erase the Vestiges of ‘Zero Covid’ to Deter Dissent

Chin@Strategy

This is how China’s ruling Communist Party wants people to remember how it handled the Covid-19 pandemic: It was a “miracle in human history.” Every measure the government imposed was rooted in science, supported by the masses — and, ultimately, “completely correct.” The party is waging an ambitious propaganda campaign to rewrite the public’s memory of “zero Covid,” a signature policy of China’s leader, Xi Jinping, that helped contain the virus for almost three years — but went to such extreme lengths that it smothered the economy and set off…

Where Did Covid Originate? Here’s What We Know and Don’t Know

Chin@Strategy

WASHINGTON — The Energy Department’s conclusion, with “low confidence,” that an accidental laboratory leak in China most likely caused the coronavirus pandemic has renewed questions about what sparked the worst public health crisis in a century — and whether the virus at the heart of it was somehow connected to scientific research. Scientists and spy agencies have tried assiduously to answer that question, but conclusive evidence is hard to come by. The nation’s intelligence agencies are split, and none of them changed their conclusions after seeing the Energy Department’s findings, officials…

China Dismisses Latest Claim That Lab Leak Likely Caused Covid

Chin@Strategy

China accused the United States of politicizing the coronavirus pandemic again on Monday, in response to reports that the Energy Department had concluded that an accidental laboratory leak had likely triggered the spread of Covid worldwide. The rebuke marks the latest salvo in a running war of words between the two countries over the origins of the virus, an issue that has taken on as much of a political dimension as a scientific one as the rivalry between the two superpowers deepens. “Covid tracing is a scientific issue that should…

China’s Cities Are Cutting Health Insurance, and People Are Angry

Chin@Strategy

Local governments across China, facing a financial tipping point after three years of expensive Covid measures, are forcing abrupt changes on the country’s health care system, squeezing benefits and angering citizens. Thousands of seniors, who are most vulnerable to the cutbacks, converged on municipal parks and other public spaces in recent days to protest the changes. They gathered in the chilly northeastern city of Dalian, in semitropical Guangzhou nearly 1,500 miles away and in Wuhan in central China, where the Covid pandemic began at the end of 2019. One of…

How Health Insurance Works in China, and How It’s Changing

Chin@Strategy

Almost everyone in China has had at least some health insurance since new policies were introduced a decade ago. Now China has begun pursuing a second wave of changes. The new policies, which have triggered protests in several big cities like Wuhan, are aimed at covering deficits in local employee health insurance plans and reducing inequality between cities and rural areas. Who has health coverage in China? China has two main kinds of health insurance: employee hospitalization insurance and so-called residents insurance. The employee hospitalization insurance is the better of…

Thousands of Chinese Retirees Protest Government Cuts to Benefits

Chin@Strategy

WUHAN, China — Thousands of retirees confronted local officials and the police outside a popular park in the central Chinese city of Wuhan to demand the repeal of recent cuts in government-provided medical insurance for seniors. The protest on Wednesday, the second in Wuhan in a week, was the latest sign of strain on the finances of China’s local governments, which are responsible for covering much of the cost of everything from health care to heating homes. China’s “zero Covid” policies, dictated by Beijing over the past three years, saddled…

N.I.H. Leader Rebuts Covid Lab Leak Theory at House Hearing

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The suspicions revolve around $8 million in grants to EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that was collaborating on coronavirus research with scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, in the city where the pandemic began. Late last month, an internal federal watchdog agency found that the N.I.H. had made significant errors in its oversight of those grants. In a 64-page report, the Office of Inspector General at the federal Department of Health and Human Services outlined missed deadlines, confusing protocols and misspent funds — raising and reinforcing concerns about the government’s…

China Celebrates Lunar New Year After ‘Zero Covid’ With Caution

Chin@Strategy

Sheng Chun had not visited his parents in their mountain village in southern China for more than three years because China’s “zero Covid” restrictions made travel difficult. Then the country abandoned its stringent pandemic rules, and he decided to take a long-anticipated road trip. With his son and wife, Mr. Sheng, 43, embarked on a two-week journey from Beijing that would cover more than 1,000 miles, through cultural spots like a Ming dynasty village and temples, then finally home for the Lunar New Year. He hoped to later drive his…

China’s New Covid Chapter

Chin@Strategy

China’s Covid outbreak appears to be going from bad to worse. In recent days, local governments have reported hundreds of thousands of infections a day. Sick patients are crowding hospital hallways, videos obtained by The Times showed. In a video from The Associated Press, a medical worker at a hospital in Zhuozhou, a city near Beijing, asked that a patient be taken elsewhere because the facility was out of oxygen. “China’s medical system is already fragile even in the best of times — people rely on hospital E.R.s for even…

Proud, Scared and Conflicted. What the China Protesters Told Me.

Chin@Strategy

They went to their first demonstrations. They chanted their first protest slogans. They had their first encounters with the police. Then they went home, shivering in disbelief at how they had challenged the most powerful authoritarian government in the world and the most iron-fisted leader China has seen in decades. Young Chinese are protesting the country’s harsh “zero-Covid” policy and even urging its top leader, Xi Jinping, to step down. It’s something China hasn’t seen since 1989, when the ruling Communist Party brutally cracked down on the pro-democracy demonstrators, mostly…