It seems that everyone is getting COVID now. In Wechat groups, on Weibo, on Twitter, and unfortunately among my friends and family in China. Many people are blaming the protesters of the Blank Paper Revolution for forcing the government to open up all of sudden.
But, WHO emergencies director Mike Ryan, during a briefing with media, claimed that the virus was spreading “intensively” in the nation long before the lifting of restrictions, according the SCMP:
“There’s a narrative at the moment that China lifted the restrictions and all of a sudden the disease is out of control,” he said.
“The disease was spreading intensively because, I believe, the control measures in themselves were not stopping the disease. And I believe China decided strategically that was not the best option any more.”
But why so much self-reported cases NOW? Many overseas Chinese are puzzled. But some also noticed that no one mentioned the symptoms of COVID before, now everyone who gets it complains that they have aches all over their bodies, high fevers, numbness in the tongues, and coughs. While during COVID-Zero period, the people quarantined in the centre were shown dancing and playing pokers. Why? What changed?
Some people explained that, because COVID patients were so stigmatized that no one dared to say in the public that they even have a fever. That was why when many people got COVID, they probably chose to hide the facts. The required PCR tests often forced masses of people to be together, exposing each other to transmissions. That was perhaps how COVID spread among people fast, but very quietly.
Someone collected the cumulative number of retired professors who died each day since September 1st from the elite Qinghua university, for 2022 and 2021 and made a plot to show that the number of death spiked around late November (COVID Zero ends on Dec. 7th):
FT reported that as early as early November, the Chinese government was consulting Hong Kong experts on how to reopen, , many days before the protests hit the street.
On Twitter, some comments make very much sense:
You can’t push zero COVID for 3 years, turn it off immediately, and call it “following the science”
What was the scientific catalyst for the sudden change?
And:
The most confounding thing about the sudden turnaround on Zero COVID is that there was no evident planning on the stockpiling of meds by any levels of government. Well, certain people there may have known, but not the average person, which is very clearly obvious now.
James Palmer, previously did not believe that street protest would change the mind of the leaders of CCP, also comments:
Increasingly I think that they were getting real bad numbers the week before the big change and just decided to give it up because it was getting overwhelmed anyway
Bill Bishop was quoting The Economist
The politics of Xi Jinping’s covid retreat : it is “misleading to draw a short, straight line between the most eye-catching demonstrations, such as one in Shanghai that saw young people chanting “Down with Xi Jinping”, and the ditching of zero-covid policies”
Many people now think that the timing of the end of COVID-Zero policy was calculated to make the COVID-Zero look successful. Look, the moment we stop to protect you, the virus spreads. COVID-Zero was working, until the idiots protested. Many people are blaming those who rebelled against the lockdown for the current explosive spread.
One Chinese social media account was mocking the shop owners in Wuhan who dismantled road blocks in the commercial streets. What did they get now that COVID-zero is gone? They got COVID and still no customers.
So, to many Chinese, it is all the fault of the people who are against COVID-zero policy.
Hospitals are overwhelmed. Especially Beijing. Five hundreds medical workers from Shandong province was mobilized to help Beijing hospitals, according to government document spread on Twitter.
Video footage of people waiting in a long line in front of a hospital in Jingmen (a relatively small city) was posted by Teacher Li. Many people explained that a PCR test was still required to go to work for many people.
In Beijing, all funeral homes are running in full capacity, 24 hours a day with 5-7 days of waiting time. It reminded me of Wuhan in early 2020. Officially, only two people died in Beijing because of the COVID, as of Dec 15th.
Even though the cases that got most attention are from Beijing, it is very likely that small places with less resources might be hit much harder, but local people could not get the attention from social media. In comparison, Shanghai and Guangzhou seems to have suffered less. There are much less complains from these two cities. For now.
The government is also launching a propaganda campaign on how much COVID is just like flu. People spotted billionaire Richard Liu, reporting that he got a very mild COVID and telling people not to be scared. In case you can’t remember him, he allegedly sexually assaulted a young student in Minnesota (see Newsletter 96 in 2018.
The lack of any preparation for the ending of Zero-COVID is obvious and shocking to many people, and it seems that WHO observation might be right, the ending was not planned and a choice, but forced upon the leadership because the virus is out of control. Now on social media, many are even saying that the government wants everyone to get COVID as fast as possible. They believe in three months, the whole country will be out of COVID and resume economic production in full speed.
Xi’s visit to Saudi was widely considered a failure in China. Many Chinese believed that Xi was investing 30 billion dollars and were expecting Saudi to “conduct oil and gas sales using Chinese currency” in return.
But the Saudi did not agree to adopt Yuan. Whether the 30 billions dollars is true or not (CNN does not mention it, Bloomberg says Saudi Arabia Says $50 Billion Investments Agreed With China alt and the more detailed article Xi Visit to Saudi Arabia Brings Pledge of More Oil Trade has no number either ), many Chinese seemed to firmly believe that the supreme leader of the country is an idiot.
In the last few years, Xi tried to push his common prosperity dream, by cooling down the real estate market, punishing tech tycoons, and forbidding school students to seek outside help and extra-curriculum education programs. Each policy pushed millions of people out of jobs.
Now, it seems that the government wants to revive these industries. Official media is reporting the central government is hosting economic plan meetings.
But can these industry come back? We have to wait and see.
In Newsletter 99, we talked about the officials in Chinese consulate in Manchester dragging protesters into the compound and beating him up. Now Reuters reported that facing police investigation, these officials have ran back to China. Meanwhile, Reuters also reported that the Chinese government vows strong counter measures. Everyone wonders exactly what kind of counter measure they can come up with ? Maybe they will prevent UK consulates in China beating up English tourists protesting Brexit?
In our newsletter 97, we discussed Wechat and why Elon Musk can not make Twitter to be Wechat. Even though Elon Musk does not have the same government protection that Weixin/Wechat enjoys in China, Twitter is getting recently some traits of Weixin/Wechat.
He hides Twitter posts that make him look bad, he forbids people posting links to Mastodon site, and of course he suspends journalists with made up charges.
And still, he did not stop there. He is making it impossible for Chinese inside China with Chinese phone numbers to sign up to Twitter. Just like Ukrainians can’t use Ukraine phone numbers to validate their account
One influential activist found out that she can not log into her Twitter account. Her alternative Twitter account is still usable, but her situation got much attention. People worried that Musk will make it very easy for the Chinese government controlled accounts to report and suspend accounts of activists.
Musk is still a few months/year from making Twitter to be X, the “app of everything”. But all the censorship of Wechat seems easy to implement.