IN for three years the Chinese have been under massive restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The hundred-day lockdowns were no exception. Imagine: a hundred days when you can’t leave the house. One hundred days in which you are forced to eat from the plastic bowls that the vendors leave at your door. One hundred days without physical contact with other people.
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The barricades in front of the apartment blocks looked like a scene from an apocalyptic movie, he said DW extension. Anonymous figures in white hazmat suits subjected people to constant tests. A positive test could have led to the isolation of thousands of people. In some cases, the pets of Chinese who tested positive were also killed. Small children were separated from their parents for days and ended up in the vast halls where the system housed the infected.
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Intimidation and control
Large-scale population restrictions were justified by the deadly danger posed by the virus. The message for everyone: Unlike the supposedly decaying Western countries – and especially the United States – the Chinese state cares about its citizens and ensures their safety. According to China, a strict zero COVID policy was needed to avoid millions of deaths.
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When the pandemic started and experience was still lacking, Germany also discussed how best to deal with the disease. Here, too, there were supporters of the strict zero-covid policy. But in late 2021 at the latest, with the appearance of the “Omicron” option, it was realized that this was only delaying the inevitable. Vietnam, which up until then also had a zero-Covid policy, has changed course. China’s communist neighbor has been hit by a serious wave of contagion, but today life is as it was before the pandemic.
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China’s “special road”.
China’s “special road” started somewhere here. As the months passed, the country fell into a deeper and deeper impasse. It was no longer mainly about fighting the pandemic, but about ideological goals. Beijing wanted to demonstrate the superiority of its system to the rest of the world.
Until the eve of the 20th Communist Party Congress in October 2022, in which President and Party leader Xi Jinping was to be proclaimed ruler for life, disorderly conduct was strictly prohibited.
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But when thousands of workers walked out of Foxconn factories after a positive case of the disease was announced, it became clear how much the Chinese people were already suffering from the Communist Party’s strict measures. Everyone simply wanted to avoid the next few weeks or months of isolation.
Protests erupted in various cities after the party congress. The participants knew full well that persecution and repression awaited them, but they still took to the streets, another sign that many Chinese are at the limit of their strength. The protests were quickly contained and at no point did they threaten the system.
A bigger threat could be the growing withdrawal of foreign investors from China. Recently, more and more international companies have publicly announced that they are withdrawing their business from the country due to the strict anti-pandemic measures.
Beijing’s radical change
Beijing’s reaction was surprising and incomprehensible. Literally overnight, restrictions and tests were removed. The rulers swung from one extreme to the other.
If the Communist Party of China was ever concerned about the safety of its citizens, it would have announced a transitional period for a comprehensive vaccination campaign and adequately prepared the health care system. Nothing like that happened.
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It turns out that the last vaccination of very old and sick people immunized with the less effective Sinovac preparation was months ago. The country’s hospitals are overcrowded. There are queues in front of the pharmacies. The virus has shown that it does not respect China’s “special way”. The experience has led to fears that millions of people could be infected and tens of thousands die from here on out.
The people, who were initially forced to isolate themselves, are now once again abandoned by the rulers.
