On Monday, October 17, 2022 at 7:06:48 AM UTC, David P. wrote:
> China is sticking to its ‘zero Covid’ policy.
> By Alexandra Stevenson, Oct. 16, 2022, NY Times
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> China’s leader, Xi Jinping, on Sunday dashed any hopes that the “zero Covid” policy — which attempts to eliminate coronavirus infections with costly lockdowns — would end in the coming months.
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> Mr. Xi argued that the Communist Party had waged an “all out people’s war to stop the spread of the virus.” China’s leadership has done everything it can to protect people’s health, he said, putting “the people and their lives above all else.” He made no mention of how the stringent measures were holding back economic growth and frustrating residents.
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> Mr. Xi emphasized that “zero Covid” had saved lives. To abandon it, he seemed to suggest, would be to disregard human life.
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> The message — delivered by Mr. Xi at the party congress — reinforced a flurry of recent propaganda published by the state media in the past week to counter mounting speculation that China might loosen its tough pandemic restrictions after the gathering.
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> To the rest of the world, where more effective vaccines and treatment have lessened the death toll from Covid-19, China’s approach no longer makes sense.
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> But China is still trying to contain the virus even as it becomes increasingly hard to do, guided by a prevailing thought that loosening up would be too dangerous for vulnerable citizens like the elderly and would overwhelm the country’s fragile hospital system.
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> Mr. Xi on Sunday also repeated a common refrain that China has won international acclaim for its go-it-alone approach to Covid, bolstering its influence on the international stage.
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> This claim was true early on in the pandemic, when China was lauded for using widespread lockdowns to stop the spread of the virus, said Yanzhong Huang, a global health expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. By 2021 the city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the new coronavirus just a year earlier, offered the rest of the world a glimpse of a post-pandemic world as residents went on with their lives while other countries were battling devastating outbreaks.
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> But as a more infectious Omicron variant broke through China’s zero Covid fortress earlier this year, officials have had to enforce increasingly stringent measures to fulfill its ongoing goal to keeping the virus out. The approach has left China isolated from the world and taken a grim toll on its economy.
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> “International reverence for Beijing’s Covid response approach has rapidly and significantly decreased, which has undermined China’s soft power, especially in the Western world,” said Mr. Huang.
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> There is also growing evidence at home that people’s patience for China’s approach to fighting Covid is waning. A nationwide mass testing requirement that was supposed to ease the pressure is not working as officials have rushed to lock down more and more cities.
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> Beyond the economy, experts have questioned how Mr. Xi will pivot away from a policy that has dominated the lives of 1.4 billion people for nearly three years.
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> “There is nothing positive or aspirational about zero Covid,” said Jude Blanchette, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
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> Instead, it’s a sword of Damocles that hangs over everyone’s head, Mr. Blanchette said, adding, “you know you’re just a few cases away from a lockdown.”

To be an analyst/expert, he or she must be able to think objectively. For instance, Mr. Blanchette could get the statistics on how many Chinese had been under what kind of locked down for how long under what viral and medical facility environment. With the information, he would be in position to discuss meaningfully on whether the Chinese policy is reasonable or not according to what criteria.

He threw out "you know you're just a few cases away from a lockdown" as if this is some kind of truth.
But can he really answer question the truthfully: If I were somewhere in China, I am how many cases from a lockdown?

In case he could not readily answer this kind of questions, Mr. Blanchette is just another apparently not well informed "China" expert.
Too lazy to think and too eager to demonize China.

Again, it is a waste of time to read NYTimes to learn more about China. For Americans who don't trust the NYTimes on American news, I certainly understand their point of view.
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> https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/16/world/asia/china-is-sticking-to-its-zero-covid-policy.html