Xinjiang: Frustrated and frustrated at the suppression of the zero Covid measures in a democracy without a uniform censor

There have been new heights of anger and frustration as local authorities rushed to resume restrictions amid record infections despite a recent government announcement of a limited easing of some rules.

The woman has been under quarantine for half a year since returning from university in the summer, she shouts at the workers. They stare back, seemingly unmoved.

The country is only days away from a relaxation of its longstanding zero Covid measures that came as a big change for many Chinese living under the confines of the government.

The Communist Party Congress starting on Sunday, which is expected to cement the power of China’s youngest leader in decades, comes just as a new strain of infections is spreading, even as flare infections are becoming more common.

Observers across the world will be watching the twice-a-decade meeting for signs of the party’s priorities when it comes to its zero-Covid stance, which has been blamed for exacerbating mounting problems in the economy, from stalled growth to a collapsing housing market.

Protest against President XI in China’s No-Go Theorem: An Outburst After 24 Months of Covid-19

Online photos posted Thursday appeared to show a rare public protest against President XI in China’s capital. “Say no to Covid test, yes to food. No to detain, no to be free. No to lie and no to be treated with dignity. Yes to reform, not to cultural revolution. No to great leader, yes to vote. There was a banner hung over an overpass that said “don’t be a slave, be a citizen”.

Search results for the site of the protest were immediately deleted by Weibo. Before long, key words including “Beijing,” “Haidian,” “warrior,” “brave man,” and even “courage” were restricted from search.

Several accounts were banned after they commented or referred to the protest.

Still, many spoke of their awe and support. Some users shared a Chinese pop hit in homage to the protester, who they referred to as a hero, while others said they saw it and wouldn’t forget.

Yet even in the face of rising public discontent, all the signs suggest Xi and his party plan to stick with the zero-Covid approach, possibly into 2023, with the state media articles this week serving to dampen speculation the country may change tack post-Congress.

In Shanghai, where 25 million people have already endured two months of the world’s strictest lockdown, residents are now on edge at any signs of a repeat as authorities begin to tighten measures once again.

The woman in the Weibo video, who has grown tired of China’s endless lockdowns, is right. More misery is on the way for China’s citizens, like those in the video, who have grown tired of the endless lockdowns.

After authorities ordered six out of its 13 districts to shut entertainment venues such as internet cafes, cinemas and bars, the city reported 47 Covid-19 cases on Thursday. Shanghai’s Disney resort has suspended some of its attractions and live performances since Sunday.

The latest outbreak of the BF.7 Coronavirus in Inner Mongolia has left Beijing without a wave of reform in its fight against Covid

Spooked by the possibility of unpredictable and unannounced snap lockdowns – and mindful that authorities have previously backtracked after suggesting that no such measures were coming – some people in the city have reportedly been hoarding drinking water.

That panic buying has been made worse by an announcement that Shanghai’s water authorities have taken action to ensure water quality after discovering saltwater inflows to two reservoirs at the mouth of the Yangtze River in September.

Exactly what is driving the increase in infections is not clear, though authorities are scrambling to contain the spread of the BF.7 coronavirus strain after it was first detected in China in late September in Hohhot, the capital city of Inner Mongolia.

The country has also seen an uptick in cases in domestic tourist destinations, despite its strict curbs having discouraged people from traveling or spending over China’s Golden Week holiday in early October.

More than 240,000 university students in Inner Mongolia have been locked down on campuses due to the latest outbreak, according to Zhang Xiaoying, a deputy director of the regional Department of Education. The head of the university’s Communist Party was fired after 39 students tested positive for the disease.

Then there is the situation in far western Xinjiang, where some 22 million people have been banned from leaving the region and are required to stay home. According to an official tally, the region recorded over 400 new cases on Thursday.

Beijing appears unwilling to change it’s hardline stance. The People’s Daily published commentaries stating that China would not let its guard down.

The battle against Covid was winnable, it insisted. Other nations that had reopened and loosened Restrictions had done so because they had failed to control the epidemic in a timely manner.

China’s Rise and Fall: The Case of Zhou and a Child Died in a Locked Building During a November 1 Video Chat

CNN gave out a version of the story in theirMeantime in China newsletter, which offered updates on what you should know about the country’s rise and how it affects the world. Sign up here.

After Zhou’s home was locked up in Beijing on November 1, his father was seen alive in a video chat on the afternoon of November 1.

He said the apartment building where Zhou family lived did not have any cases at all, and they did not even realize that the Covid restrictions had been imposed.

Zhou’s father was denied immediate emergency medical help after he suddenly began struggling to breathe during a video call, and his family found out the hard way. According to Zhou, security guards barricaded relatives from entering the building to take his grandfather to a hospital and he made a dozen calls for an ambulance.

On the same day Zhou lost his father, a 3-year-old boy died of gas poisoning in a locked down compound in the northwestern city of Lanzhou, he was blocked from going to a hospital. The little girl died after a delay in medical care at a hotel in Zhengzhou.

Zhou said that he contacted several state media outlets in Beijing to report his story, but that they did not come. He turned to foreign media even though he knew he could be in trouble with the government. CNN is only using his surname to mitigate that risk.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/25/china/china-zero-covid-discontent-reopening-mic-intl-hnk/index.html

The Zhengzhou-Chongqing Zero-Covid Lockdown: The First City to Lock Down a Game-Changing Game

In the central city of Zhengzhou this week, workers at the world’s biggest iPhone assembly factory clashed with hazmat-suited security officers over a delay in bonus payment and chaotic Covid rules.

And on Thursday, in the sprawling metropolis of Chongqing in the southwest, a resident delivered a searing speech criticizing the Covid lockdown on his residential compound. “Without freedom, I would rather die!” he shouted to a cheering crowd, who hailed him a “hero” and wrestled him from the grip of several police officers who had attempted to take him away.

Many Chinese football fans have been unable to see their team play at the World Cup due to restrictions but these acts of defiance echoed the discontent online as tens of thousands of rowdy fans packed stadiums for the tournament.

The fans are not required to wear masks or submit proof of Covid test results. Are they still living on the same planet as us? There is a Wechat article questioning the authenticity of China’s insistence on zero- Covid.

There are signs that Chinese officials are feeling the heat of the growing public discontent, which came on top of the heavy social and economic tolls inflicted by the widening lockdowns.

The Chinese government has released a 20-point guideline to limit the disruption of Zero- Covid rules on daily life. Quarantine was shortened from 10 to 8 days because of close contacts with people who had the same disease. It also scrapped quarantine requirements for secondary contacts, discouraged unnecessary mass testing drives and removed a major restriction on international flights.

Many local officials are reverting to a strict approach to controlling infections instead of relaxing controls.

Shijiazhuang was the first city to cancel mass testing. It also allowed students to return to schools after a long period of online classes. Authorities ordered people to stay home Monday due to cases that rose over the weekend.

People coming to the city from other places were banned from entering shopping malls, restaurants, supermarkets and gym for five days. Authorities also shut down cultural and entertainment venues in half of the city.

In Guangzhou, officials this week extended the lockdown on Haizhu district – where the protest took place – for the fifth time, and locked down its most populous Baiyun district.

Throughout the weekend, some businesses were closed in Beijing, and city streets were largely deserted, as residents either fell ill or feared catching the virus. The biggest public crowds seen were outside of pharmacies and Covid-19 testing booths.

Zhong, in the state media interview, said the government’s top priority now should be booster shots, particularly for the elderly and others most at risk, especially with China’s Lunar New Year coming up next month – a peak travel time where urban residents visit elderly relatives and return to rural hometowns.

The zero-Covid crisis is not going to stop, but Beijing is going through an uphill battle: the health system in the early stage of a massive outbreak

Huang said he does not expect any fundamental changes to the zero-Covid policy in the short term. The local governments have not changed their incentive structure. They are still held accountable for the situation in their jurisdiction.

For their part, Chinese officials have repeatedly denied that the 20 measures listed in the government guidelines were meant for a pivot to living with the virus.

According to the disease control official, the measures are tooptimize the existing prevention and control policy. He said that they were not an easing of control.

Back on the outskirts of Beijing, Zhou said while the zero-Covid policy “is beneficial to the majority,” its implementation at a local level had been too draconian.

“I don’t want things like this to happen again in China and anywhere in the world,” he said. “I lost my father. My son lost his beloved grandfather. I am angry now.

The mobile itinerary card health tracking function was to be taken off on Monday but was put on hold.

The system, which is separate from the health code scanning system that is still required in a reduced number of places in China, attempts to identify people who have been to a city with a designated high-risk zone using information from their cell phones.

But as the scrapping of parts of the zero-Covid infrastructure come apace, there are questions about how the country’s health system will handle a mass outbreak.

Media outlet China Youth Daily documented hours-long lines at a clinic in central Beijing on Friday, and cited unnamed experts calling for residents not to visit hospitals unless necessary.

Health workers in the capital were also grappling with a surge in emergency calls, including from many Covid-positive residents with mild or no symptoms, with a hospital official on Saturday appealing to residents in such cases not to call the city’s 911-like emergency services line and tie up resources needed by the seriously ill.

The daily volume of emergency calls had surged from its usual 5,000 to more than 30,000 in recent days, Chen Zhi, chief physician of the Beijing Emergency Center said, according to official media.

Covid-19 has been spreading rapidly in China since the first pandemic of 2020: A top health official tells Xinhua that the world is ready to take care of the epidemic

Covid was “spreading rapidly” driven by highly transmissible Omicron variants in China, a top Covid-19 expert, Zhong Nanshan, said in an interview published by state media Saturday.

“No matter how strong the prevention and control is, it will be difficult to completely cut off the transmission chain,” Zhong, who has been a key public voice since the earliest days of the pandemic in 2020, was quoted saying by Xinhua.

The rapid roll out of testing nationwide made it difficult for officials to gauge the extent of the spread and the shift by many people to use their own tests at home made official data meaningless.

Last Wednesday, top health officials made a sweeping rollback of the mass testing, centralized quarantine, and health code tracking rules that it had relied on to control viral spread. Some aspects of those measures, such as health code use in designated places and central quarantine of severe cases, as well as home isolation of cases, remain.

After the Chinese government surprised the world by removing their measures, experts warned that China may be underprepared to handle the expected surge of cases.

While Omicron may cause relatively milder disease compared to earlier variants, even a small number of serious cases could have a significant impact on the health system in a country of 1.4 billion.

The National Health Commission of China said in astatement that it would set up more clinics for fevers, enhance medical staff for intensive care and increase the number of ICU wards.

Meanwhile, experts have warned a lack of experience with the virus – and years of state media coverage focusing on its dangers and impact overseas, before a recent shift in tone – could push those who are not in critical need to seek medical care, further overwhelming systems.

The overhyping of the virus by the state in the past two years may cause some misunderstandings among people in rural China. This is one of the reasons why people are so afraid,” he said, adding that he still supports the government’s careful treatment of Covid-19 during the pandemic.

China’s market watchdog said on Friday that there was a “temporary shortage” of some “hot-selling” drugs and vowed to crackdown on price gouging, while major online retailer JD.com last week said it was taking steps to ensure stable supplies after sales for certain medications surged 18 times that week over the same period in October.

A hashtag trending on China’s heavily moderated social media platform Weibo over the weekend featured a state media interview with a Beijing doctor saying people who tested positive for Covid-19 but had no or mild symptoms did not need to take medication to recover.

“People with asymptomatic inflections do not need medication at all. It is easy to rest at home and maintain a good state of mind. ,” Li Tongzeng, chief infectious disease physician at Beijing You An Hospital, said in an interview linked to a hashtag viewed more than 370 million times since Friday.

The drug shortage has spread from mainland China to Hong Kong, a special administrative region which has a separate system of local government. The health chief of the city urged the public to refrain from panic buying cold medicines, and to not to overact.

Canned yellow peaches are medicines. The company said something in the post. There is no need to panic because there is enough supply. There is no rush to buy.”

The People’s Daily, which is published by the Communist Party, tried to set the record straight. The public was urged to not use the peaches, calling them useless in alleviating symptoms of illness.

Authorities also pleaded with the public not to stockpile medical supplies. The Beijing government said that it was facing great pressure due to an influx of patients at clinics and panic buying.

Shares of Hong Kong-listed Xinhua Pharmaceutical, China’s largest manufacturer of ibuprofen, have gained 60% in the past five days. The stock has so far jumped by 147% in the first two weeks of this month.

“Our company’s production lines are operating at full capacity, and we are working overtime to produce urgently needed medicines, such as ibuprofen tablets,” Xinhua Pharmaceutical said Monday.

The local brand name Panadol has sold out in some Hong Kong drugstores. Most of the buyers were sending the medicines to their families and friends in the mainland, sales representatives told CNN.

The Growth of Burial and Funeral Services in China, a Research Report from Citi Group (SQF), a Global Platform for Interhumided Mass Masses

Even providers of funeral and burial services are getting a boost. Shares in Hong Kong-traded Fu Shou Yuan International, China’s largest burial service company, have soared more than 50% since last month.

There is “strong pent-up demand for burial plots” in 2023, analysts from Citi Group said in a recent research report, adding that they’ve noticed increasing investor interest in the sector.

Hundreds of thousands of cremated remains are temporarily stored in government facilities awaiting burial. Lockdowns across much of the country have halted funeral services, they said.