7 Jan, 2023 14:32
Faced with a new wave of Covid, China is opening its borders – was Beijing left with no other choice?
China began to lift restrictions after mass protests, but they were not the main reason for the concessions
(Holy shit, January is their Holiday month, 100s of 1,000s entered the US in December & early January of 2020. This was told to a friend from a Chinese friend in San Fran Jan 2020. They aren’t conceding they are allowing people to go overseas. Beef up on supplements and treatment anons)
Despite the world’s concerns over a new wave of the coronavirus pandemic, Beijing has no choice but to open up. The notorious ‘zero-Covid’ policy is no more. After three years of harsh quarantines, China is finally returning to normal life and opening its borders. The Asian giant will no longer impose sudden lockdowns.
Since 2020, the Chinese people have been living under the constant threat of new outbreaks and uncompromising government actions that were hurting both livelihoods and the quality of life.
The rules were changed only recently, following a series of protests that swept the country. A tragedy provoked a public outcry, after which people took to the streets and clashed with police. After all of that, the government announced that it was canceling most of the restrictions. China is finally on its way back to the pre-pandemic normal.
However, while locals are celebrating, the rest of the world is concerned. Many media outlets and experts state that we might now be on the brink of another global pandemic that will quickly spread beyond China’s reopened borders.
The question is: were the authorities so alarmed by the protests that they decided to suddenly change their policy and ignore the global threat? Or was the widespread discontent merely the last straw that made changes come about sooner?
The well-meaning crackdown
Methods of fighting the pandemic varied across the globe. Some countries remained under lockdown for just two or three months, whereas others decided to open up much later. Yet China chose arguably the most aggressive strategy to protect itself against the virus.
The zero-tolerance policy had many nuances and intricacies. Yet its main goal can be summarized as “eliminate even the possibility of the virus spreading by any means necessary.” The elaborate monitoring system was based on health codes assigned to each Chinese citizen, as well as to foreigners entering the country.
Health codes acted as a sort of digital ID that included data about the individual’s travel history, residence, and medical records. It also displayed one of the three risk levels: green, yellow, or red. Green means ‘safe’, yellow indicates that the person might have been in contact with someone who was infected or comes from a region with a high infection rate, and red means that the person almost certainly carries the virus. The system was far from perfect, yet it helped limit the spread of Covid and allowed the authorities to track possible hotspots of the pandemic.
People in big cities usually had to get tested every few days to keep their health codes green. And if their test result was positive – or, in some cases, if they were in contact with an infected person – many had to immediately go to the hospital or to a quarantine center, whether they wanted to or not.
Lockdowns could be issued at different levels, from a single city district to a whole region. However, since local authorities were directly responsible for the spread of the virus and often lacked specific instructions, they preferred to err on the side of caution and issued lockdowns freely. Over the last two and a half years, at least 100 Chinese cities have experienced partial lockdowns.….
https://www.rt.com/news/569442-china-is-opening-its-borders/