In view of the Chinese New Year, Beijing downplays the wave of covid – Pierre Haski

Rarely has the gap between official information and reality been so great. The Chinese evening news begins each evening with a long sequence devoted to the activities of the executives, in hierarchical order: the number one Xi Jinping attends an economic meeting, Xi publishes a new book, and so on. Then, after about 20 minutes, some images relating to covid-19 arrive, in passing, to underline that the party line is the correct one.

But in conversations among the population, things are very different. There is only talk of the virus, of the race for medicines, of crowded hospitals with beds also placed outside, of the endless waits in the crematoria that work on a continuous cycle. And of the dead, the number of which is unknown because the government has changed the definition of the victims of covid-19.

The news of the death of an opera singer, a retired university professor or an elderly artist circulates on social networks, but without the virus being indicated as the cause of death, because otherwise all communication would be censored. In any case, no one has any doubts.

Another priority
The wave of the pandemic is hitting large Chinese cities in the wake of last month’s sudden change of approach, which came after three years of a zero covid strategy. The priority is no longer the virus, but the recovery of the broken down economy.

The spread of the infection is impossible to quantify, first of all because tests are almost no longer carried out in China. The administration structures have been dismantled because the new permissive strategy makes them useless, while the authorities have simply announced that the peak of infections in Beijing has been passed.

Furthermore, China does not provide complete information to WHO, which has openly complained about it. A rare criticism of the institution towards Beijing.

Finally, China is preparing for a new test: next week there will be the celebrations for the Chinese New Year, with hundreds of millions of people who will reach their families and spread the virus in rural or isolated areas, where the health system is even more fragile than cities.

To save face, Beijing attacks its detractors abroad, starting with the countries that impose checks on the arrival of flights from China, an imposition that Beijing deems unacceptable.

China stopped issuing visas to citizens of South Korea and Japan this week, two countries that test passengers arriving from China. The choice is all the more surprising if we consider that the Chinese authorities still require a molecular swab from anyone who wants to enter the national territory.

This overreaction mainly serves to turn the outside world into a scapegoat in the eyes of the Chinese public. With this in mind, Beijing is multiplying its warnings against the covid xbb 1.5 variant discovered in the United States, wondering why Europe does not also check passengers from there. The answer to this question, evidently, is linked to vaccines.

In this regard, the initiative of the Hong Kong branch of a Chinese state bank makes you dream: the bank promises a dose of Pfizer’s vaccine to all customers who open a current account with a deposit of around 500 thousand euros. The Pfizer vaccine cannot be found in mainland China, especially since it is US. But Beijing is not afraid of contradictions, because the party is always right.

(Translation by Andrea Sparacino)