Hutong Cat | Xi's challenge: How to relax curbs amid a rise in Covid infections

The big question is how smooth the transition from the toughest Covid-restriction rules globally to a more flexible mode of home quarantine and self-testing will be. Or, perhaps, how chaotic will the changes be?

Chinese leader Xi Jinping in his keynote address to pliant delegates at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on October 16 said China should be “prepared for worst-case scenarios” and “adapt and be ready to withstand high winds, choppy waters and even dangerous storms”. Xi didn’t categorise the storms but one is already brewing.

The protests subsided at the beginning of the week but the ripples had reached far and wide. (AFP)

Five weeks into his third tenure as the Communist Party of China (CPC) general secretary, Xi is facing the toughest domestic tests in his career as a strongman leader: How to gradually dismantle the all-pervasive ‘zero-Covid’ apparatus comprising quarantine and mandatory mass tests amid a surge in infections, widespread discontent over Covid curbs and the inevitable – if unannounced officially – move towards existing with the virus.

The big question is how smooth the transition from the toughest Covid-restriction rules globally to a more flexible mode of home quarantine and self-testing will be. Or, perhaps, how chaotic will the changes be?

It will be a test like no other for Xi as changes in Covid curbs will impact the entire 1.4 billion population of China, the country’s health infrastructure, given that a fresh surge in infections is expected when the restrictions are withdrawn, and the economy.

The unvaccinated elderly, millions of whom have comorbidities, and the low average of hospital beds for every 1,000 population – and even lower intensive care unit beds, according to a Bloomberg report – is weighing on the ruling Communist Party of China’s (CPC) leadership as curbs are lifted and nucleic acid test requirements are made less necessary.

In November, the top Chinese leadership, led by Xi, reviewed the ‘zero-Covid’ policy and announced a 20-point “optimisation” agenda.

The focus was on streamlining the existing strategy and shedding excessive control or the ‘one size fits all’ approach.

China to ease its ‘zero-Covid’ rules was the buzz on Chinese social and official media the week (beginning November 27) after rare and widespread protests by citizens against Covid-control curbs took place in several cities. The protests were spontaneous and unprecedented.

Social media reports and footage indicated that, separately, there were many incidents where residents in gated communities across China – some of which had faced complete lockdowns because of a handful or even a single Covid case – stood up in protest against their apartment administrations, forcing them to unseal complexes so that normal lives could be resumed.

The protests subsided at the beginning of the week but the ripples had reached far and wide.

Despite widening censorship on social media including any protest-related information, groups on WeChat continued conversation on Covid-controls, how local authorities were balancing rising infections and easing of restrictions, and whether the curbs will be fully withdrawn or not.

Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan, the country’s most senior official directly dealing with pandemic control, spoke on adjusting the ‘zero-Covid’ in a meeting during the week without directly mentioning it.

Sun, according to the official news agency, Xinhua, told a group of national health commission (NHC) experts that China was “…facing a new situation and new tasks in epidemic prevention and control as the pathogenicity of the Omicron virus weakens, more people are vaccinated and experience in containing the virus is accumulated”.

Sun urged efforts to “further optimise the Covid-19 response, improve diagnosis, testing, treatment and quarantine measures, strengthen immunisation of the whole population, particularly the elderly, and step up the preparation of medications and other medical resources”.

More than a dozen cities including Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Urumqi have since eased a range of ‘zero-Covid’ policies, mostly to do with access to public transport and public spaces.

More easing of the stringent rules, which had wound around the lives of people in China like a tourniquet for months, is expected in the coming days.

“To speed up an orderly return to normal lives and production, some regions hit by the virus have begun fine-tuning their measures, such as lifting temporary control orders, waiving regular testing requirements for certain groups and allowing close contacts of confirmed patients to self-isolate at home,” the state-run China Daily newspaper said in a report on Friday.

Another state media report from the tabloid, Global Times also reported Friday that several major Chinese cities, including Beijing and Tianjin, will scrap checks of two-day or three-day valid Covid-19 test results previously required for passengers of public transportation from Monday (December 5.)

“Residents in cities such as Chengdu and Guangzhou no longer need to show test results when entering most public places,” the GT report said.

Much more needs to be done, right from changing the government’s tone of messaging about Covid-19 to how to control the Omicron-driven pandemic.

Until now, the government as well as the official media’s narrative had solely and rather ominously focused on how dangerous the Omicron variant was because it spreads faster than earlier variants, and how the health infrastructure would collapse if restrictions were withdrawn.

Then, vice-premier Sun unexpectedly toned the rhetoric down, saying that Omicron is less pathogenic: It was a message in the right direction.

Soon, and miraculously, the Global Times, unearthed new research by a team of Chinese scientists saying the same – Omicron is less dangerous.

“Pathogenicity and virulence of coronavirus variants are the key problems that Chinese scientists have been focused on. Recently a research team from the State Key Laboratory of Virology in Wuhan University conducted an experiment, which showed that the pathogenicity of Omicron had dramatically decreased,” the Global Times report on the new study said.

For the Communist party, changing the official narrative from the great efficacies of the zero-Covid policy – marked by low infections and minimum deaths – to a new flexible regime of curbs will be easy – it just has to add “curbs with Chinese characteristics” to describe it.

But people in China will closely track the changes and how the new approach affects their lives.

The problems Chinese faced were aptly described in a blog titled “People First", not "Pandemic Prevention First”, which recently went viral.

“That sentiment (in the blog) exactly reflects the problems emerging in pandemic prevention in some places, with the emphasis that “people first” should not be replaced by “pandemic prevention first.” Some practices prevent outbreaks but in doing so ignore people’s livelihoods and the economy,” a report in news and business website, Caixin, said this week.

For Xi, the most powerful Chinese leader in decades, the litmus test will be when the storm makes a landfall. Soon.

Sutirtho Patranobis, HT’s experienced China hand, writes a weekly column from Beijing, exclusively for HT Premium readers. He was previously posted in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he covered the final phase of the civil war and its aftermath, and was based in Delhi for several years before that

The views expressed are personal