Although the best outcome is obviously hoped for by all, relaxing dynamic zero-COVID at this time is a mistake and it’s disheartening to see the central government seemingly concede to societal and economic pressures on this front, pressures which, arguably, were nowhere near critical mass. Just last month, it had been reiterated that "决不能造成放松疫情防控，甚至放开、“躺平”的误读” and this recent shift seems to fly in the face of that position. Loosening COVID controls has always been one of those instant gratification policy moves that everyone approves of - until half a year later, when the virus has stormed through the vulnerable age brackets, hobbled the medical system infrastructure and swathes of the population are silently stuck with varying degrees of Long COVID. That’s always been the difficulty with selling the idea of COVID restrictions to societies across the world: the concept of sacrificing the short-term for the long-term.
The tone of benign neglect under which the central government is apparently permitting this relaxation to take place at the moment, where sub-level jurisdictions are seemingly setting their own laissez-faire policies contradictory to November's “进一步优化防控工作的二十条措施" is bound to be disastrous unless inter-provincial border restrictions are unlikely installed. As the lesson of COVID at the global scale should have plainly shown, the incompetence of the lowest common denominator will ruin the collective efforts of everyone else. This concern is especially pronounced when they’ve decided to enact this in the middle of winter and before the Spring Festival, the world’s largest annual mass-travel event.
Although the escalation of this policy change in the aftermath of those “protests” make it difficult to not see them as somewhat correlatively reactive, "按闹分配” as one would say, the idea that Chinese people are somehow gullible or naive enough to blame the protestors for the ensuing consequences of relaxation rather than the government is obviously dismissible. Foreign media is already releasing propaganda along the new narrative angle of “China rightfully caved in to the insuppressible voice of the people but now the incompetent government is botching the re-opening process."
I will say that, going through the domestic forums, this relaxation is unsurprisingly being taken as a slap in the face, especially by COVID vulnerable groups who understandably feel like they're now being left out in the dust. Domestic compatriots, the quiet majority, made massive personal sacrifices over the past three years of pandemic restrictions, doing their duty for the common good in silence, all the while as the malcontents who thought they were unique in their hardships screamed about zero-COVID oppression endlessly to foreign media. People defended the government policy and upheld the scientific approach only to have domestic media like Xinhua and Global Times now about-face and downplaying Omicron’s pathogenicity for seemingly PR purposes, government officials in Guangzhou apparently spreading Western fake news talking points like “COVID = Flu” and having to suffer the gloating Zhihu liberals now trolling that anyone not supporting reopening is "against the government line" and an "unpatriotic reactionary." This whiplash in policy communication is causing unnecessary civic nihilism in a society already subjected to relentless “lie flat” apathy narrative pressures.
The frustration in sentiments like these cropping up is frankly understandable:
That said, this was an inevitability if epidemiological conditions failed to improve and I suppose this relaxation of policy indicates that the government no longer believes the material conditions of COVID-19, whether the theory of virulence degradation or innovations in medical intervention, are set to improve in the short to possibly medium term, as there’s no reason why they wouldn't have continued to hold out if so. Since permitting the risk of endemic COVID emergence in the world's last COVID-free stronghold is a genie that can't be put back in the bottle, the logistics of enacting this before the Spring Festival and the absence of a concerted push for synchronized approaches amongst the sub-level jurisdictions by central government coordination are hopefully works in progress.
