Opinion | China’s ‘Zero Covid’ Obsession Is Gone, but the Trauma Lingers
New York TimesDec 21, 2022
On Tuesday, China's National Immigration Administration (NIA) said it would resume issuing tourist passports for Chinese mainland residents and renewing and extending visas for foreigners starting on Jan. 8, following Monday's removal of COVID from its list of illnesses requiring quarantine.
The NIA will also resume the processing of endorsements for Chinese mainland residents to visit Hong Kong for tourism and business purposes, the issuance of port visas, the implementation of the 24/72/144-hour visa-free transit policy, and the issuance of temporary entry permits per the law.
China's zero-COVID policy did little to quell the virus but a great deal to disrupt the normal lives of its vulnerable residents and cause irreversible damage to its economy. The PRC's hermit strategy has now seemingly been thrown out as the country moves to the other extreme, which will allow the virus to run rampant, strain the health system, and leave its population on its own. The absence of a coherent fallback strategy threatens a fresh set of nightmares for the whole world.
Three years ago, China managed the pandemic under Category A disease protocols as it was still novel and had strong pathogenicity and fatality rate. With its zero-COVID measures, the PRC could halt the spread of infection that caused millions of deaths worldwide. The shift of policy doesn't mean reduced responsibility but rather a change of focus. It's time to move forward. Beijing's current strategic easing will safeguard both health and the economy.
There's a 3% chance that cumulative reported deaths from COVID in China will exceed 50K before 2023, according to the Metaculus prediction community.