The rigid corona policy in the Middle Kingdom is history: China has completed a complete about-face.Image: AP / dpa
politics
Until recently, corona infections in China were rigorously combated. Now thousands of deaths are accepted every day. The radical about-face is worrying for Taiwan.
Peter Blunschi / watson.ch
What’s in China plays, eludes any rational assessment. Within a few weeks, the People’s Republic of a rigorous zero-Covid policy switched to total infestation. The virus rushes through the population like a tsunami. countless people are ill, hospitals and crematoria are overwhelmed.
Until recently, even individual corona infections were fought with tough lockdowns and admissions to the notorious “quarantine centers”. In regions like Xinjiang, people are said to have been locked in their homes for more than 100 days. Now the government allows people to go to work with a “mild” illness.
Corona sufferers and their relatives in an emergency room in Bazhou, China.Image: AP / Dake Kang
It’s hard to believe. Is this the same country whose regime touted the Zero Covid policy as a role model for the world for nearly three years? In return, the propaganda media focused on the “decadent” West and especially the United States beaten up where the pandemic hit hundreds of thousands of people Life cost.
Wrong priorities
The justification for the radical change of course seems far-fetched. It has recently been reported that Omikron is “more harmless” than earlier virus variants (as if we hadn’t known that for a long time). The Communist Party also claims that Zero Covid has bought time to prepare China for “living with the virus”.
But that is precisely what cannot be said. Huge sums of money were spent on long-term tests, for example, while the medical infrastructure was not upgraded for the wave of illnesses. The vaccination campaign was also neglected. Older people in particular are not vaccinated at all or insufficiently. They are largely defenseless.
Absurd test requirement
Experts consider the Chinese corona vaccines to be quite suitable. However, three doses are necessary for good immune protection. And Beijing still wants nothing to do with Western vaccines. Head of state Xi Jinping is only just supposed to rejected an offer from German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
A nurse administers a corona vaccination to an old woman in Nantong.Image: CHINATOPIX via AP / Uncredited
For this, from January 8th the quarantine requirement upon arrival in China is no longer applicable, the government announced on Monday. A negative PCR test no more than 48 hours old is required – for entering a country where the virus is raging like never before. Not even Samuel Beckett, the master of the theater of the absurd, would have come up with this idea.
5000 deaths a day
The government doesn’t have to worry about that. It stopped publishing daily corona data on Sunday. She was probably aware that the reported few thousand infections had nothing to do with reality. British health data analyst Airfinity is leaving of one million new infections and 5000 deaths in China – per day.
The World Health Organization (WHO) was “very concerned” about developments in China last week. It is important to speed up the vaccination campaign. The change of course is received differently by the general public. While some are happy, others wonder why the endless lockdowns and endurance tests were necessary.
Xi Jinping’s prestige
For President Xi Jinping, Zero Covid has long been a matter of prestige. He let himself be celebrated as a “victor” over the virus and tried to disguise the alleged origin of the pandemic in Wuhan. When experts advised gradually moving away from Zero Covid after the emergence of Omikron, Xi is said to have personally vetoed it.
For a long time, Chinese President Xi Jinping had a zero-Covid policy. That’s over now.Image: www.imago-images.de / Xinhua
Now Zero Covid is actually over, but not in an orderly manner, but rather abruptly and haphazardly. The reason for this may have been the protests that took place in several cities in November. When people dare to take to the streets in a country where opposition is rigorously repressed, popular resentment must be overwhelming.
ideology instead of pragmatism
So far the departure from the previous doctrine is understandable. That doesn’t make the circumstances and the willingness to put up with countless deaths any less irrational. Xi Jinping probably thinks he can afford it, because he was able to cement his power at the party congress in October and enthrone himself de facto as ruler for life.
His term of office to date has been marked by increasing ideologization and a departure from the relative pragmatism that had long characterized China’s politics. The public humiliation of his predecessor Hu Jinato at the end of the party congress was a signal in this direction.
But that not only makes China irrational, it also makes it dangerous.
threats and provocations
What is meant by this is less the risk that a new virus variant will develop that could bypass the immune protection. Rather, China is becoming geopolitically unpredictable. This can be seen, for example, in the support given to Russia in the Ukraine war. Xi Jinping seems to use just about any means to destabilize the West.
Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen has repeatedly had to comment on China’s provocations. Image: www.imago-images.de / ZUMA Wire
But the biggest concern is in Taiwan. Threats and provocations directed at the “renegade” island have become more acute in recent months. Beijing announced military maneuvers on Sunday. Within 24 hours, 71 Chinese planes and seven ships were spotted near Taiwan.
Escalation or relaxation?
Officially, it was a response to the decision in the US Congress to grant Taiwan new loans to buy weapons to provide. However, experts are increasingly assuming that Xi Jinping could order an invasion of Taiwan sooner rather than later. He has blatantly threatened to take the Democracy Island with him force to bring to their knees.
The course of the Ukraine war could prevent him from doing so. And recently there were also signs of relaxation. So posed Xi last week prospect of normalization in relation to Australia. In April 2020, the Australians called for an international investigation into the outbreak of the corona pandemic, to which China responded with sanctions.
On Monday, Xi was quoted in the state media for the first time about the new way of dealing with Corona. Accordingly, he asked the authorities to do everything “possible” to save lives. That doesn’t make the radical about-face any less irrational. For the rest of the world, it is more than ever a reason to be careful when dealing with the People’s Republic.
A mob of tens of thousands of angry people tries to undermine American democracy. They see it as their right, believe in the myth of a stolen election, adore a president who is at this point serving his last days in office – and fueling the crowd at the same time.
