Zero-Covid has hewn China into separate fiefdoms
Last month, a guest speaker at a lecture series in Shanghai was due to give a talk on tourism within and beyond China, which has been crippled by years of pandemic restrictions. But when the day arrived, the lecture was cancelled. The reason? The speaker had himself been travelling. The then rules blocked anyone who had recently returned to Shanghai from attending public places for five days, to limit the risk of a Covid outbreak.
Popular discontent over the zero-Covid policy spilled over in late November, spreading across the country. Since then, the government has unveiled a sweeping nationwide relaxation of the rules amid outbreaks in several of its biggest cities. But what may have been less obvious to the outside world is that physically moving between those cities has become harder than it has been for decades — and the problem is unlikely to disappear overnight.
In the early stages of the pandemic, the government’s attempts to eliminate the virus constrained travel between China and the rest of the world. Later on, that applied to travel within the country itself. The Shanghai travel rules (which were cancelled on Wednesday, just a few weeks after their introduction) were introduced as a defence against rising cases elsewhere in China, which recently hit record daily highs. Even if travel now becomes easier, the environment in the country has for years involved myriad risk calculations, such as those of unplanned quarantine and hiccups in the digital testing system.
This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Thomas Hale
