China may have announced a major Covid easing by curbing "Ceng Ceng Jia Ma" but its most egregious control measure remains intact -- Beijing's pop-up notification.

The announcement of the new rules on Friday have brought cheer around the country, sending the stock markets higher. But their celebration may be premature.

Thought of the Day on China

“Ceng Ceng Jia Ma”. To better understand why China’s zero-Covid policies have caused widespread misery and discontent around the country over the past three years, one must have a firm grasp of the meaning of this four-character Chinese phrase.

It literally means “adding extra layer upon layer of control”. The phrase succinctly explains how the local authorities at all levels have taken excessive steps to control the movement of population in the name of achieving the goal of the so-called “dynamic zero-Covid”, on top of the central government’s already draconian national policies.

Over the past three years, we have seen too many sad and unbelievable examples of human suffering from those excessive measures. A sizeable city of a few million people could be in lockdown for weeks and tens of thousands of people were quarantined only because of a handful of confirmed coronavirus cases. In other cities where no case was reported, residents were still required to undergo daily testing for weeks or even months on end. Both Xinjiang and Tibet have been under lockdown for three months already. Critically ill patients died in front of the hospitals because they could not produce negative test results.

The central government has long known about this and has frequently issued directives and ordered local officials to stop excessive policies but to no avail.

This may sound incredible at a time when President Xi Jinping has consolidated his power and the authority of the central government.

The reason? Local officials feel emboldened to openly disobey central government directives because of the pattern of punishments that has emerged amid the pandemic, with officials who adopted excessive virus suppression policies rarely facing disciplinary action – despite causing economic damage and hardships – as their peers who failed to prevent outbreaks were summarily sacked.

After Xi further cemented his power and packed the new leadership lineup with his allies following the Communist Party’s 20th congress last month, the central government has finally taken concrete steps to ease controls and send a clear signal that “Ceng Ceng Jia Ma” will not be tolerated further.

On Thursday Xi chaired a meeting of the new Politburo Standing Committee members and approved 20 new measures to make it easier to travel and live in the country – the first major easing in the past three years.  

The measures include a cut to mandatory quarantine time for overseas and domestic travelers, a reduction of mandatory testing and isolation in low-risk areas, and a renewed push to vaccinate the vulnerable.

But the leadership has also made it clear that the easing does not mean a lifting of Covid restrictions and the policy of “dynamic zero-Covid” will still be pursued “tenaciously”.

Indeed, as mentioned in one of my previous articles, China still has a long road to reopening for business.

The leadership may signal for the first time to seriously curb the practices of “Ceng Ceng Jia Ma” by the local authorities but it has apparently left the most egregious one intact – Beijing municipal government’s ban on residents returning if they travel to a county or city where there is even one fresh confirmed case.

This comes in the form of a pop-up notification on the Beijing health code app, which prevents the bearer from taking any form of public transport to the capital until the place they are staying has had no new confirmed cases for seven consecutive days. With the new rules coming into effect on Friday, that number may have been reduced to five days.

The ban was apparently introduced to keep China’s capital virus-free in the run up to and during the Communist Party’s 20th Congress last month when Xi secured a norm bursting third term as the party chief.

Now that the meeting is over but Beijing authorities have given no indication that it would lift the ban.

But the rule’s enforcement, aided by the big data and artificial intelligence, is arbitrary and confusing. Once a person receives a pop up notification, they will have to apply for the removal of the ban through an official app every day until the notification is removed. A few lucky ones may see their ban lifted only after a few days but for many other people, this can take weeks or even months, causing emotional distress and complications in people’s lives and work. Tens of thousands of Beijing residents have been stranded outside the city, unable to return home.

The announcement of the new rules have brought cheer around the country, sending the stock markets higher on Friday.

But their celebration may be premature.

End.