China’s media promises ‘normalcy by spring’ as Covid sweeps country

China’s state media has promised a return to “normalcy” within a few months and rejected western criticism as its censors seek to portray an “exit wave” of coronavirus cases sweeping the country as part of a planned strategy.

“Virus experts expect normalcy by Spring,” read a headline in the China Daily, the country’s premier English language outlet, alongside other articles with headlines such as “Experts: Omicron has lower risk of causing severe illness”.

After years of warning of the dangers of Covid, Chinese authorities this month slashed testing requirements, allowed most Covid patients to quarantine at home and lifted lockdowns.

The U-turn, which followed an economic slowdown and growing popular resistance to the policies, has been accompanied by a reversal in the official rhetoric on the virus compared with just weeks ago when state media maintained that containing it was the only suitable approach.

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Propaganda organs had lauded Beijing’s zero-Covid policy as evidence of its concern for its people in contrast to relaxed restrictions in western countries, which it depicted as morally compromised and economically crippled by the virus’s spread.

“At the central level, [the U-turn was] very stark,” said Ryan Manuel, managing director of Bilby, a consultancy that analyses Chinese government documents, though he added that local authorities had sent “mixed signals” on zero-Covid for several months.

Following the central government’s easing of zero-Covid this month, official media have painted a picture of the policy change as planned, economically advantageous and timed in such a way as to avoid excess deaths.

“Where China stands in Covid deaths globally,” read the headline of another of China Daily’s reports, which explained that the official national death toll was the lowest of any “major” country and 1/232 of the global average, citing respiratory disease expert Zhong Nanshan.

The report is accompanied by a graphic tracking total death tolls in China, the US and globally, with the line for China remaining flat throughout.

Experts dispute China’s methodology for counting deaths. The mainland’s death toll since early December, when it started relaxing zero-Covid, is just seven people, for instance. This compares with Hong Kong, a city of more than seven million people, that as of Monday had reported 39 deaths over the previous two weeks.

Several models, including one part-funded by the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, have predicted China could have up to a million Covid deaths in the reopening phase as the country dismantles its strict controls.

But Chinese media, despite predicting similarly cataclysmic consequences from a pivot away from zero-Covid just weeks ago, are now underlining how nearly three years of strict curbs bought the country time to vaccinate its population and improve medical infrastructure.

Beijing’s top talking heads have also stepped in to defend the government’s chaotic reopening to citizens complaining of empty pharmacy shelves and a lack of medical supplies.

Hu Xijin, former chief editor of the populist Global Times newspaper, told his 25 million followers on the Weibo app that Beijing was “facing an unprecedented battle” and it was overly “idealistic” to expect adequate preparation.

“Is it inadequate preparation? It’s a total lack of preparation, producing some fever relievers two weeks ago would have been enough,” retorted one netizen.

While China’s zero-Covid approach served the country well earlier in the pandemic, when millions of lives were lost in other countries, analysts said it did not use the time to fully vaccinate its elderly or adequately prepare its healthcare system.

“The best Covid fighting strategy in the world in 2020 became literally the worst in 2022,” Ian Bremmer, head of Eurasia Group, said in a note. He described China’s Covid exit as “a sudden, shocking about-face without strategy or preparation”.

However, commentators in China Daily and CGTN, the English-language arm of state broadcaster CCTV, attacked what they called “western media bias” for criticising China’s approach.

A Monday editorial in Xinhua, the official government news agency, argued that the zero-Covid policy “shift was made in accordance with the weakened pathogenicity of the virus”.

It added: “It does not run counter to the hard truth that China is one of the world’s best achievers in terms of saving lives from the... pandemic. China has honoured what it has always said it would do – putting the people and their lives above all else.” – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2022