Many Asian and Pacific countries are dismantling thickets of pandemic rules at bewildering speeds, even though the Omicron variant of the coronavirus is still raging in many places. The trend could be seen in the crowds packing the Manila zoo, K-Pop concerts in Seoul and Hindu festival celebrations across India over the last week.
The moves are driven by a mix of medical advice, economic pressure and a pandemic-weary public’s growing sentiment that enough is enough. But there is at least one major country bucking the trend: China.
Mainland China, with 1.4 billion people, has tried to stick with a “zero Covid” approach, including snap lockdowns and strict border controls, since early 2020. State-controlled media play up reports of the pandemic’s high toll of death and illness abroad, and point to China’s relatively low numbers as a sign of the superiority of the country’s system.
But experts have questioned the wisdom of the country’s maximalist approach, which has disrupted manufacturing and snarled frayed supply chains, as China has grappled recently with its largest outbreak since the pandemic began.
“China’s zero-Covid policy will increasingly leave it — and Hong Kong, to the extent that it follows — isolated,” said Victor V. Ramraj, a law professor at the University of Victoria in Canada.
Volkswagen said on Thursday that its large assembly plant in Changchun, in China’s Jilin Province, would remain closed on Friday, marking two weeks of closure. Jilin Province has been hit hard by Omicron, with roads closed and large urban areas locked down. Volkswagen declined to say when the assembly plant might be able to reopen. Its factories in Shanghai also closed for two days last week, but quickly reopened.
Hong Kong, a Chinese territory whose Covid policies once mirrored those on the mainland, took a different tack this week. Alarmed at the cost of lockdowns and isolation for an economy that relies heavily on international trade, the territory’s leader, Carrie Lam, announced a reversal of its ban on flights from nine countries. She also signaled plans to further relax Hong Kong’s pandemic restrictions, as most other countries in the region are doing, even if Beijing is not.
