Until recently, COVID-19 was described as a very dangerous disease in Chinese media, which criticized the chaotic handling of the pandemic overseas. But as China seems to be beginning its exit from “zero COVID”, suddenly everything seems less serious.
“Don’t be too terrified, but also take some precautions” against the virus, launched in recent days to its readers the Beijing Youth Dailythe capital’s state daily, by publishing testimonies of convalescents.
In this country where the press is almost exclusively under the control of the Chinese state, the media was quick to toe the new official line, a week after historic protests against health restrictions.
For almost three years, Beijing has applied a strict health policy involving repeated confinements and PCR tests that have become almost daily. But popular anger is now pushing the authorities to ease these measures.
This is accompanied by an official message which is intended to be more reassuring about the dangerousness of the virus, Chinese President Xi Jinping himself acknowledging that the country can now allow itself “more flexibility”.
The Omicron variant “has nothing to do with last year’s Delta variant”, assures the professor of medicine Chong Yutian, of Guangzhou, in an article published by the China Youth Daily.
“After infection with the Omicron variant, the vast majority of people will have no or very mild symptoms, and very few will have severe ones, it is already widely known,” he adds.
Prepare the terrain
Friday, the People’s Dailyan organ of the ruling Communist Party, quoted several health experts saying they were in favor of the decisions of certain local governments to authorize people who tested positive to carry out their quarantine at home – and no longer in specialized centers, with random comfort.
This is a radical departure from the norm in force until then.
“This is a kind of official propaganda to prepare the population for more easing and to give the government the means to withdraw (from the zero COVID policy),” political expert Willy Lam told AFP. Chinese based in Hong Kong.
The media thus make it possible to prepare the ground, but also, if necessary, to transfer the fault to the local authorities, blamed for excessive zeal in the application of the restrictions.
The organization in charge of the response to the virus warned, in the People’s Daily Saturday: local officials who have done too much will be “strictly held accountable”.
“Many local officials will be punished,” predicts Willy Lam.
A first example came on Saturday from Hunan province. A local security official was expelled from the Communist Party and fired for assaulting a resident during a lockdown-related altercation.
The companies responsible for processing the tests are also being singled out, with state media having reported several cases of violations they allegedly committed in recent days.
These companies “will be the first to be sacrificed by the government,” said Chinese political blogger Jing Zhao on Twitter, speaking under his pen name Michael Anti.
Enough to satisfy “the wish of some people to find scapegoats”, while “the abandonment of PCR tests, to replace them with less sensitive antigen tests, makes more sense with Omicron and can alleviate the pressure on the control of the pandemic”.
The good of the people
For the Chinese government, doing an about-face after three years of anxiety-inducing propaganda around the virus is not easy.
But he already seems to be back on his feet, claiming to do so for the good of the population.
While several local authorities have announced that the elderly and those who rarely leave their homes will be exempt from large-scale PCR testing, the state agency New China was quick to describe the move as proof that “the government is responding to the demands of the people.”
The Chinese Communist Party “admits that the policy of zero COVID has jeopardized a fundamental pillar of its legitimacy: its promise to provide a minimum standard of living for citizens”, analysis for AFP Diana Fu, associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto.
Easing health restrictions, she said, is part of the party’s traditional strategy of responding to protests “with carrots and sticks.”
“As the security apparatus has swung into action to suppress protesters, local governments are also making concessions in terms of easing anti-COVID restrictions, to ease the pressure. »