China’s social media cheerleaders also questioning Covid Zero

A file photo shows workers erecting fencing around a neighbourhood in lockdown in Shanghai's Changning district, after new Covid-19 cases were reported. China announced the relaxation of some of its hardline Covid-19 restrictions on Nov 11, 2022, after authorities had vowed to stick to a zero-tolerance virus approach despite mounting economic damage. — AFP

Key pro-China commentators have started raising questions about the country’s Covid Zero policies on social media, another sign officials in the world’s No. 2 economy may be prepping the public for further changes to President Xi Jinping’s signature policy.

The critiques come from people such as Zhou Xiaoping, once praised by Xi for spreading “positive energy”, and Lu Kewen, who is reported to have millions of followers across several social media platforms in China.

Increasingly, the commentators are wondering aloud about the need for long lockdowns, the costs of closing China off from the rest of the world, and the mental health toll from trying to keep 1.4 billion people free from what has become a more transmissible, yet less dangerous, variant of Covid.

Writing on WeChat this week, Lu said it was no longer possible to “keep in contact with the outside world” while also pursuing “complete, thorough dynamic clearance” of the Covid-19 virus. “At least one thing has to change.”

It’s all adding up to an “inflection point” for the government’s approach, Lu added.

The shift comes with China making significant changes to a policy that has undercut economic growth and even fueled sporadic public and online protests. On Friday the government said it was cutting the amount of time travellers and close contacts must spend in quarantine, and pulled back on some testing requirements.

The changes are happening despite Covid infections in China exceeding 10,000 for the first time since April, with Beijing’s cases at the highest level in more than a year. China’s new Politburo Standing Committee, chaired by Xi, this week called for "more decisive” measures to control the virus and resume normal life and production as soon as possible, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

The commentators weighing in on the Covid policies are often anti-West, nationalist and virulently pro-Han Chinese, with a wide following on social media. The fact that they largely aren’t being censored suggests at least tacit approval from the government.

Commentators like Zhou make it clear they are not attacking the nearly three-year-old Covid Zero strategy, but are merely questioning its excesses.

In one posting, a commentator nicknamed Liji, who has more than 5 million followers, wrote a post on Friday asking “What on earth is happening in Xinjiang?” That’s the western, Uyghur-dominated region where the plight of citizens under lockdown drew sympathy nationwide earlier this year.

“It is unbearable that more than 20 million people are being reduced to just case numbers,” Liji wrote.

In a sign that the government still has limits on the type of criticism it is prepared to accept, a Weibo post by Liji on Nov 4 about mental health issues tied to the pandemic and lockdowns has disappeared. He wrote that the real damage from the problem may never be known.

“No one opposes Covid prevention, just as no one would oppose daily health-care services,” he said. “But measures adopted by some areas have reached a level where there’s not much difference between how one chooses to die,” he said, an apparent reference to a mother who recently committed suicide during isolation in the northern city of Hohhot.

Zhou, the social media figure praised by Xi who has nearly 900,000 followers on Weibo, wrote a long post on Monday that questioned the need for extended lockdowns.

“It is known to all that in some places, the lockdowns have lasted for more than 90 days,” he said, again a reference to Xinjiang. “This has obviously gone beyond what the public could tolerate.”

Zhou also downplayed concerns about long Covid, saying it only affects a small number of people, and told his followers not to believe rumours that hundreds of thousands of people had needlessly died in Singapore, South Korea and Japan when those Asian nations opened.

Still, he took a swipe at the US for accepting more than one million deaths from the virus, echoing a criticism frequently made by Chinese diplomats who want to show the superiority of Covid Zero. – Bloomberg