China dials back its unpopular zero-COVID policy

This follows unprecedented protests, weeks after Xi Jinping’s coronation at the 20th Party Congress.

A local official speaks with a demonstrator holding a blank sign during a protest in Beijing, China, on November 28. | Photo Credit: Bloomberg

The change, when it finally came, was both sudden and understated. The dramatic U-turn, after three years of the world’s most restrictive COVID-19 restrictions, was conveyed in a seemingly innocuous 160-word Xinhua report issued late in the evening of November 30 that recounted a meeting between Vice Premier Sun Chunlan, China’s top COVID-19 official, and members of the National Health Commission (NHC).

Up until that evening, local officials around China were in a race against time, locking down millions of Chinese in a bid to stop what was the biggest outbreak in China since the pandemic began in Wuhan in early 2020. For three years, 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 that have isolated the world’s second-largest economy.

Then came the directive from Beijing. For the first time, Sun did not mention “zero-COVID”. Also for the first time, and more significantly, COVID was not spoken of as the life-threatening illness that merited such a harsh policy but as a virus with, as Sun put it, a “decreasing pathogenicity”.

November 30 will, as the Chinese magazine Caixin reported, “likely go down as the day that China’s central government finally relented” and began a “seismic shift”, but it was clear that the model was coming under increasing stress in recent weeks and months.

Zero-COVID worked for China in 2020 and 2021, sparing the country a second wave and mass deaths. Thanks to the model, China returned to normalcy by the summer of 2020, and for more than two years, people in China were spared the worst horrors of the pandemic as the rest of the world dealt with waves and lockdowns. Schools remained open. Factories hummed. And China registered a record trade performance for two years, supplying the world with everything it needed.

People demonstrate with white sheets of paper to protest extra strict COVID-19 restrictions, at a vigil for the victims of a fire in Urumqi on November 28. | Photo Credit: THOMAS PETER/REUTERS

Then came more transmissible variants, as well as vaccines that allowed the rest of the world to live with the virus. In the face of Omicron, the model struggled. Lockdowns became harsher. Shanghai, China’s biggest city, was locked down for two months. Many residents suffered from acute shortages of food and medicines, an unthinkable prospect for people in China’s financial centre.

Only in October, leader Xi Jinping had defended the zero-COVID policy at the Communist Party’s 20th Party Congress. Yet there were signs that the model was coming under renewed stress, exacting ever-greater economic and social tolls.

The Party Congress, which marked the start of Xi’s unprecedented third five-year turn, appears to have marked an inflection point. Many Chinese had tolerated zero-COVID with the expectation that the party’s big event would finally mark a relaxation that many were waiting for. However, a rise in the number of cases, fuelled by Omicron, across China brought more lockdowns. By November, more Chinese cities were partially locked down than at any time during the pandemic.

Riots broke out at the Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn’s facility in Zhengzhou, China’s biggest iPhone assembly plant, as workers complained of not getting their compensation and being locked down for weeks.

Turning point

A watershed moment came on November 24, when a fire in an apartment complex in Urumqi, in the western Xinjiang region, killed 10 people. Videos on Chinese social media showed fire trucks parked outside the gates of the complex, with the water spray struggling to reach the fire, fuelling the perception that lockdowns had caused yet another tragedy. The local government denied that the apartment complex was locked down, instead blaming parked cars.

For the millions in China who had, at some point in the past year, been similarly confined to their apartments, the tragedy struck a nerve. An extraordinary outpouring of grief and rage filled Chinese social media, and on the weekend of November 26-27, many Chinese in cities around the country came out to stage spontaneous public remembrances for those who died in Urumqi.

Closed stores during Covid-19 curbs in Beijing, China, on November 21, 2022. | Photo Credit: Bloomberg

Crowds gathered in Shanghai, a city that had suffered its own brutal lockdown, calling for an end to lockdowns. The day after, Beijing saw its own rare protest, as several hundred people gathered similarly, calling for an end to lockdowns. “We don’t want COVID tests, we don’t want lockdowns, we want freedom,” was the chant in Beijing, where protesters gathered for several hours before a heavy, but restrained, police presence dispersed them.

The protests had spread to 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. Many that gathered held up blank white sheets of paper: an ingenious protest that simultaneously conveyed their frustration at not having their voices heard and made it difficult for authorities to accuse them of anti-party messages.

China sees more protests than is usually assumed. Local-level protests against land grabs or environmental pollution are frequent. But what China had not seen is a national-level protest on one unifying issue. “We haven’t seen scenes like this since 1989,” a veteran Chinese journalist told Frontline.

At the Nanjing Communications University, where thousands of students gathered with blank white sheets of paper, sparking the national trend, a university official reprimanded them with a megaphone, warning them they were going against “state policy” and would “pay one day for what they had done”. One of the students responded: “The state will also have to pay.”

At a protest in Beijing, which was a hub of the pro-democracy movement in 1989, an official accused protesters of colluding with “hostile foreign forces”, a catchphrase usually used by the state to pin responsibility for acts of unrest. “Which foreign forces?” a student countered. “Do you mean Marx and Engels?”

Many of the young protesters sang the national anthem; the message was that they were gathering out of a sense of patriotism.

It appeared that the message had finally been heard. Three days later came Sun’s announcement of the country’s pandemic fight now facing “a new situation”, marking the beginning of the end of Zero-COVID. Further easing measures were announced on December 7, doing away with lockdowns and mass testing.

The road ahead

The road ahead for China remains fraught with risks. Zero-COVID, while extracting heavy tolls, spared China mass deaths. China officially has only recorded a little over 5,000 COVID deaths, an extraordinary record even while taking into account possible undercounting. China has not seen overwhelmed hospitals or a collapse of its medical system, something that the rest of the world experienced.

That is now the fear. The focus now turns to rapidly accelerating vaccinations for the large elderly population, one of the justifications for continuing zero-COVID. There was, of course, also the politics behind it, given the party had consistently highlighted the model as a contrast to the West witnessing mass deaths. The pivot away from zero-COVID has been explained by the virus now being less virulent.

A traveller heading to quarantine in the arrival hall at Hong Kong International Airport in Hong Kong, China, on August 8. | Photo Credit: BERTHA WANG/Bloomberg

Yet, this was a pivot that could have been better planned, at least with an exit strategy. The exit now appears to have been forced without the preparation.

The government has said only 40 per cent of the 30 million above-80 population has completed the three doses of Chinese vaccines shown to be required, according to Hong Kong data, to prevent hospitalisation and death. It has announced a target of vaccinating 90 per cent of this group with at least one shot, up from the current 76 per cent.

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.

For this reason, the move to open is likely to be gradual. Over the coming months, as vaccinations continue, the effort will be to buy time: easing restrictions while carrying out more targeted lockdowns in areas where hospitals begin to face overwhelming burdens.

For many in China, the exit from zero-COVID, which decimated small businesses and upended lives, will bring relief after three long years. Its end now seems inevitable. But first, a difficult winter awaits.

The crux

• 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.