• After three years of the world’s most restrictive COVID-19 restrictions, China announced a dramatic U-turn on November 30.
  • China had followed a “zero-COVID” policy, which calls for locking down neighbourhoods that report a positive case, tracing all contacts and sending them to central quarantine facilities, and strict limits on international travel.
  • A watershed moment came on November 24, when a fire in an apartment complex in Urumqi, in the western Xinjiang region, killed 10 people.
  • Protests broke out in more than 50 campuses, reflecting the particular anger of many young Chinese who have spent the past year confined to their dormitories or in online learning.
  • Faced with two choices—continuing zero-COVID and opening up—the government seems to have now firmly indicated it is moving towards the latter despite the very real risk of mass deaths among a large unvaccinated, vulnerable population.