Residents are growing increasingly fatigued, defiant, and mocking of the approach, while experts are questioning how a country that prides itself on cutting-edge technology and scientific innovation could find itself on a course so radically different to the rest of the world.
In another particularly telling incident, Chinese authorities even censored a North Korean public health video titled “Understanding Omicron”.
The two-and-a-half-minute video released by Pyongyang, itself battling a wave of Covid, is hardly revolutionary; it does little more than explain that most Omicron patients will have mild symptoms and that only the most serious cases will need hospital treatment.
It’s common knowledge in most of the world that infection with Omicron typically causes less severe disease than infection with prior variants. But shifting focus away from the potential severity of the disease runs counter to China’s narrative, and the video was therefore swiftly scrubbed from the Chinese internet.
Likewise censored was the news that North Korea is ready to lift its lockdown restrictions and get on with things.
In contrast, China continues to shut down entire communities and cities over a handful of Covid cases. All positive cases and close contacts are sent to government quarantine, while nearby neighborhoods are often locked down for weeks.
Despite the best efforts of China’s censors, the news seeped out and many Chinese internet users even commented that the hermit nation for being more “scientific” than China.
There’s of course widespread skepticism around North Korea’s claims that it has Covid under control. The World Health Organization at the start of this month said it assumed that the pandemic situation there was actually getting worse, contrary to Pyongyang’s claims, as the country struggles with a lack of vaccines and health care resources.
But the fact that even the secretive, autocratic government of North Korea is at least sharing internationally accepted information about Covid has many social media users in China incredulous. One put it bluntly: “Suddenly I realized, we are the most pathetic.”
Meanwhile, Dandong, a Chinese city bordering North Korea, was under lockdown for nearly two months, with authorities only announcing the relaxation of some measures earlier this week.
Videos online show Chinese health workers placing what appear to be rows of machines to monitor the air along the Yalu River that separates the two countries. Apparently, China has also ordered nearby residents to close their windows — it fears the wind may blow the virus in from North Korea.
Backed into a corner
Early in the pandemic, such public questioning of China’s approach might have seemed unthinkable. Back then, China’s snap lockdowns, mass testing, and harsh quarantines successfully contained the virus.
Its approach was so effective, in fact, that China has since repeatedly boasted of its superiority to the West, claiming that zero-Covid should be a model for the world. As China’s propaganda machine relentlessly reminds everyone, the country has reported just over 5,000 deaths compared to a million in the United States.
But China’s early successes may be part of the problem. Having backed themselves into a corner with their earlier rhetoric, China’s leaders feel unable to change tack — even in the light of more transmissible variants like Omicron — without an acute loss of face.
So Xi has stuck to his vow to “unswervingly adhere” to zero-Covid and all the officials below him are under pressure to fall in line — regardless of what the scientists or anyone else think. The goal is to keep Covid cases outside government quarantine facilities at zero, no matter the economic or social cost.
“Any voice advocating deviation from the zero-Covid path will be punished … No one from the top really listens to expert opinions anymore, and it’s honestly humiliating,” one official from a provincial-level health commission told The Lancet medical…
Read More: In China, science-based approaches to the virus are being sidelined