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CNN
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2022 was supposed to be a triumphant year for China and its leader, Xi Jinping. For he began his 20-year reign with a pledge to restore the nation to greatness.
Instead, China will continue to undermine Mr. Xi’s rule, from months of overzealous enforcement that wrecked its economy and sparked historic public discontent, to massive abandonment that disrupted its fragile health system. I’ve had the most difficult years down there. To deal with the surge in cases.
The turmoil and turmoil are in stark contrast to earlier in the year when Beijing showed success in its Covid containment measures by keeping the coronavirus nearly at bay from the Winter Olympics.
Over the past year, Xi Jinping’s signature pandemic policies have gone from being a source of legitimacy for the ruling Communist Party to a crisis that threatens to undermine it.
As an unprecedented wave of infections and deaths sweeps the country, many have sacrificed so much under zero coronavirus, and after waiting so long to reopen, the government finally took precautions and preparedness. I question why they let the virus infiltrate the population with so little. .
As 2022 draws to a close, CNN looks back at five key milestones for China’s zero-coronavirus policy this year.
The conference was a great success for China’s zero-virus strategy.
The ubiquitous face masks, constant spraying of disinfectants, and rigorous daily inspections have paid off in the sealed and meticulously managed Olympic bubble. Infected visitors arriving in the country were quickly identified and their cases contained, making the Winter Olympics nearly Covid-free even as the Omicron variant raged around the world.
This success added to the party’s narrative that the party’s political system is better than Western democracies in dealing with the pandemic — a recurring statement by Xi as he prepares for a third term in office. The message touched my heart.
It also boosts China’s confidence that its sophisticated zero-Covid strategy of lockdowns, quarantines, mass testing and contact tracing can build effective defenses against the highly contagious Omicron and contain its spread. I was. Ahead of the Olympics, these measures worked in his January, in Tianjin, a port city near Beijing, to curb the country’s first outbreak of his Omicron.
But it didn’t take long for Omicron to seep through the zero Covid void. By mid-March, China was battling its worst Covid outbreak since the first wave of the pandemic, with thousands of new cases being reported daily from northern Jilin to Guangdong in the south.
Shanghai’s financial hub quickly became the epicenter. Local authorities initially denied the need for a city-wide lockdown, but imposed it after the city reported 3,500 daily infections.
The two-month lockdown has become a clear symbol of the economic and social costs of Covid-zero. In the country’s wealthiest and most attractive city, residents were subjected to widespread food shortages, a lack of emergency medical care, modest makeshift quarantine facilities and forced disinfection of their homes. severely undermined public confidence in
The lockdown has also hit the economy hard. China’s GDP shrank by 2.6% in the three months to June, but the youth employment rate reached a record high of nearly 20%.
But costly lockdowns have not encouraged China to shift away from a zero-tolerance approach. Rather, officials hailed it as a victory in the fight against Covid.
The pressure only increased as the party’s most important national convention approached.
President Xi, who has been deeply involved in zero Covid, has fallen into a trap of his own making. He couldn’t afford to walk away from it, and the potential surge in infections and deaths posed a very big risk to his authority before he secured a norm-breaking third term in Congress.
So, instead of vaccinating the elderly and increasing ICU capacity, authorities will spend the next critical months building larger quarantine facilities, rolling out more frequent mass testing, and temporarily Wasted money enforcing a broader lockdown that has affected more than 300 million people.
However, even the most stringent measures could not stop the spread of Omicron. By October, China was again reporting thousands of daily infections. Amid mounting public discontent, the People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s main spokesman, argued that zero Covid was “sustainable” and the country’s “best choice.”
At the conference’s opening ceremony, Xi said he fully supported his efforts to combat the novel coronavirus, saying he “prioritized the people and their livelihoods above all else.” He won a major political victory, securing his third term and racking up the party’s top ranks with staunch allies, including those who dutifully implemented his Covid policy.
Officials took the hint and are more eager than ever to implement Covid Zero, dashing hopes that the country will open up after Congress.
As restrictions tightened, more suffering and tragedy came out of the relentless lockdown.
Migrant workers abandoned locked-down Foxconn factories en masse and walked miles to escape the outbreak at China’s largest iPhone assembly plant. A 3-year-old boy died of gas poisoning during lockdown after being blocked from being taken to hospital immediately. A 4-month-old girl died in hotel quarantine after her medical procedure was delayed for her by 12 hours.
Then, in late November, a deadly apartment fire in the western city of Urumqi ignited a public outrage that had been boiling over for months. Despite official denials, many believed that lockdown measures hampered rescue efforts.
Protests have erupted across the country on a scale not seen in decades. Crowds gathered on university campuses and on the streets of major cities, demanding an end to constant coronavirus testing and lockdowns, while others denounced censorship and demanded greater political freedoms.
In Shanghai, demonstrators even demanded Xi resign. It was an unimaginable act of political defiance against the most powerful and authoritarian national leader in decades.
The nationwide demonstrations presented an unprecedented challenge for Xi. By then, Omicron appeared to be spiraling out of control, with the country recording more than 40,000 daily infections, the economic strain mounting, and local governments running out of cash to pay for hefty lockdown bills. has run out.
In an apparent effort to appease protesters, some cities have begun easing restrictions.
Then, on December 7th, the central government announced a sweeping overhaul of its approach, rolling back lockdowns, conducting tests and allowing residents to self-quarantine at home.
Since then, state media and health officials have downplayed the threat of the virus rather than preaching it.
The easing of stifling restrictions has been a long-awaited relief for many, but its sudden and haphazard catches an unprepared public off guard and has forced them to fend for themselves.
Over-the-counter cold medicines and fever medicines, whose purchase was restricted due to zero corona, were quickly sold out at pharmacies and online shopping sites. Huge queues form outside fever clinics and hospital emergency rooms, with many elderly people overflowing with patients. Crematoria are struggling to keep up with the influx of corpses.
Amid the turmoil, the government stopped reporting the majority of Covid infections in the country and narrowed the criteria for counting Covid deaths in a way the World Health Organization warned it would “greatly underestimate the true death toll”. I got
The move takes into account public panic, but it also has a political context.
For nearly three years, China’s lower number of COVID-19 cases and deaths compared to countries such as the United States has been held up as a measure of party achievement and legitimacy.
Now, the sheer scale of the outbreak and death toll could seriously damage the credibility of governments that have justified years of painful restrictions on the grounds that they were necessary to save lives. I have.
Some studies estimate that China’s sudden, ill-prepared reopening could lead to nearly a million deaths, close to the Covid death toll in the United States.
Zero Covid has finally died as China enters its third and darkest pandemic winter, but the aftermath from its demise will haunt the country well into next year.
