An official announced that China would implement a zero-covid strategy ‘for the next five years’ – before its remarks were quickly withdrawn.
Beijing Daily, a state-run newspaper, today quoted the capital’s secretary Cai Qi as saying the country would ‘maintain its pandemic control policy for the next five years’.
But after the comments provoked a major setback on Chinese social media, all references to the time frame were quickly removed from the publication’s website, citing an ‘edit error’.
Chinese social media giant Weibo responded to the news by banning all hashtags calling the phrase ‘for the next five years’ on its platform.
Despite this, his other remarks, including routine PCR tests, strict access rules, regular health check-ups in residential areas, and strict testing for people entering and leaving Beijing, remained in place.
It has not yet become clear why the reference was removed from the piece, although it has been suggested it was a ‘placeholder’ referring to the start of the next five-year planning period, which should start on 1 July.
Two years after the pandemic, China remains the only country to use severe restrictions to prevent further outbreaks of Covid-19.
This is a strategy that has led the country to officially record only 5,226 deaths due to coronavirus, but has been criticized as unsustainable by the World Health Organization (WHO).
China continues to shut down entire communities and cities over just a handful of reported infections, with all positive cases and close contacts being sent to the government quarantine.
And while Beijing and Shanghai have recently managed to suppress an outbreak of the Omicron variant, the strategy has wreaked havoc on the local economy, with the unemployment rate for people aged 16 to 24 reaching a record high of 18 in May. Reached 4%.
Despite this, President Xi Xinping earlier this month claimed ‘perseverance is victory’, and there are no signs that China intends to abandon its policies.
The current plan has also seen the country’s vaccination rate drop significantly to below 800,000 doses administered per day.
That is down from a staggering 20 million at its peak in 2021, as the country rather shifts its focus to lockouts and quarantines.
U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns recently said he expects China to keep the policy in place until “the early months of 2023” based on signals it has received from the Chinese government.
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