Day: October 12, 2022

The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has doubled down on its leader Xi Jinping’s zero-COVID policy, with a key political communique ahead of the 20th party congress saying it must become “normalized.”

The final plenary session of the CCP Central Committee, which typically sets the tone for the party congress that follows, said the government had persevered with rolling lockdowns, mass testing and a health code app that controls people’s movements and successfully “normalized” the anti-COVID measures.

Meanwhile, the CCP’s official newspaper, the People’s Daily, ran two front page op-ed articles supporting zero-COVID.

“We can’t lie down on the job, because it’s impossible to win that way,” read the headline of one article on the front page on Wednesday, while an article dated Oct. 10 called for public patience with the measures, which have seen millions sealed into their homes, often without enough to eat or access to medical treatment, resulting in reports of deaths from suicide, starvation and untreated medical emergencies across the country.

The first article said governments around the country must “stick unswervingly to the zero-COVID policy, successfully normalize disease control and prevention measures, and never lose sight of the fundamental aim, which is to prevent large-scale outbreaks.”

“People on a 100-mile journey can’t stop after 95 miles and call it success,” the second article said. “In the fight against the pandemic, confidence is more precious than gold.”

“Some countries choose to lie down on the job, adopting the ‘living with COVID’ strategy,” it said. “This isn’t because they don’t want to control the pandemic, but because they are unable to.”

Chinese political commentator Wei Xin said the communique shows that Xi’s zero-COVID policy is now a main plank of the official party line.

“Sticking with zero-COVID means … maintaining the authority of CCP Central Committee with Xi Jinping at the core,” Wei said. “I believe that zero-COVID will continue for a long time after the 20th National Congress is over.”

“It has become part of China’s national governance now, and even part of the 20th party congress,” he said.

Former Chinese Red Cross official Ren Ruihong said the repeated praise for zero-COVID in the People’s Daily means that Xi Jinping is firmly in charge, on the eve of a congress at which he will seek an unprecedented third term in office.

“One faction has always hoped that there might be some relaxation of the policy, so they can start to see some economic recovery,” Ren told RFA. “For the People’s Daily to insist on zero-COVID at this time … means that zero-COVID will be with us for some time to come.”

“It is also telling people who has the upper hand in politics, and that there won’t be any leeway [for those who oppose zero-COVID], that this is just wishful thinking,” Ren said. “All the power is still in the hands of the Xi faction.”

School closures

The articles and communique came as authorities in the northern city of Xi’an closed schools, colleges and other public places in a notice dated Oct. 11.

A resident of the city surnamed Ma said children are continuing to take their classes online.

“All classes have been suspended today,” Ma said. “My kids are [grown] now, but my grandson’s school is making arrangements online.”

“Every class in their school has its own WeChat group, where a teacher sets homework for them at a set time,” he said.

Tourist attractions, museums, movie theaters and other public venues have also been closed since Oct. 11, after a handful of local COVID-19 cases were detected, bringing the total number of confirmed cases since Oct. 1 to 12, with 52 asymptomatic infections.

“Places needed to support life haven’t been closed … supermarkets are still open,” Ma said. “But every time there is an outbreak, prices rise: [the government’s attempts at] price-monitoring are ineffective.”

Zheng Yun, California-based director of the Chinese Democracy Education Foundation, hails from Xi’an and has been in touch with family members back home.

She said most people are now “numb” to the continual lockdowns and disruptions to daily life.

“They said they were pretty numb to it now,” Zheng said. “It’s scary that it has just become the norm now.”

“Some places may [handle it in a way that] makes some people resist, but they are quickly suppressed,” she said.

Students from Lanzhou College of Arts and Sciences in the far-western province of Gansu were among those criticizing the zero-COVID policy on their campus on Tuesday, after thousands of students contracted COVID-19 after being forced to quarantine together in close quarters.

“Don’t just sit there and ignore this; do something to save us,” wrote one desperate student in a school WeChat group. “I’ve been begging for help for a whole day now, but no-one has come.”

“Why are they doing this? Why don’t they value students’ lives as their own?”

The student said he had called emergency services repeatedly, but that they never answered the phone.

Coverup in Lanzhou

An employee of a Lanzhou university who gave only the surname Zhao said the mass infections at the Lanzhou arts university were initially covered up by the authorities, who hoped that sending students to quarantine camps would mean the rest of the world never found out about the local outbreak.

He said a young man in the city was recently held in administrative detention and fined 2,000 yuan for claiming there would be a lockdown in the city.

“If you’re not an official, then everything you say is a rumor,” Zhao said. “You can’t tell the truth.”

The zero-COVID policy has also seen authorities in the southwestern province of Yunnan tell tourists stranded by a lockdown to consider taking jobs in the Xishuangbanna region, where they will be forced to remain for some time.

And Zhang Hai, a resident of the southern city of Shenzhen, said many districts there remain under lockdown.

“Yesterday, there were 33 more cases in Shenzhen, and many venues were shut down again,” he said.

“They now found another mutation of COVID-19; its lethality is weakening, but the government still torments ordinary people,” Zhang said. “Everyone is really sick of doing constant PCR tests, but there’s nothing we can do about it.”

By Oct. 11, authorities in Guangdong, Shaanxi, Shandong and Inner Mongolia had reported finding the Omicron BF.7 variant, the first time the mutation had been detected in the country.

Meanwhile, residents of Shanghai began panic-buying bottled water earlier this week, amid reports that the city’s drinking water supply has been jeopardized by salinization of local rivers following the summer’s disastrous drought in the Yangtze river basin.

Shanghai resident Zhu Jinhua said news of a possible water shortage in Shanghai’s reservoirs.

“Shanghai hasn’t had much rain this year,” Zhu said. “When it did rain, it was just a drizzle, not a downpour.”

“This year was a little worse compared with previous years, so now I have to order bottled water.”

The Caixin news site said the drought had meant that less fresh water from the river is entering the brackish areas at the river’s mouth, with salt water entering reservoirs at Chenhang and Qingcaosha earlier this month, forcing them to shut their sluice gates.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Educators in Hong Kong have called for clarification of rules around flag-raising ceremonies after 14 secondary school students were suspended for failing to show up to one at a school in Tsuen Wan district.

St Francis Xavier’s School said it had suspended the students for three days for “committing disrespectful acts” in not showing up for the nationalistic ritual, which has been mandated in government-funded schools in Hong Kong since Jan. 1, 2022.

The ceremonies are aimed at promoting national education and “affection for the Chinese people,” according to officials, and come amid a citywide crackdown on any form of public criticism of the government.

All primary and secondary schools must now also display the national flag on every school day, as well as on Jan. 1, the July 1 handover anniversary and on China’s Oct. 1 National Day.

Local media reported that some of the students were still eating breakfast in a covered playground when the national anthem began to play.

The government passed a law in June 2020 making it illegal for anyone to disrespect the Chinese national anthem, and legislated in October 2021 to ban disrespect to the national flag or emblems of the People’s Republic of China.

However, the Hong Kong education bureau’s handbook for schools states that suspension should only be used as a punishment for students who repeatedly break the rules despite warnings.

“Suspension is not an appropriate way to deal with students who break the rules,” a copy of the handbook published on the bureau’s official website states.

It says schools should only suspend students if they fail to improve their behavior after “repeated admonitions and notification of the student’s parents or guardians.”

‘Drastic’ move

Mervyn Cheung, the chairman of the Hong Kong Education Policy Concern Organization, told government broadcaster RTHK that the punishment imposed by St Francis Xavier’s School was “drastic,” and said suspending pupils should be a last resort.

“I think the EDB (Education Bureau) should consider revising the circular that it issued last year and be more specific with the penalties for non-compliance,” he told the station.

He said that the severity of any punishment could be based on factors such as whether the pupils were being negligent or whether their actions were deliberate.

The Education Bureau said on Monday that there are clear rules governing etiquette during the national anthem and flag-raising ceremony, and that it had requested a detailed report from the school, RTHK said.

Some of the students gave interviews to local media criticizing the suspension, especially in the wake of recent school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A parent of a secondary school student who gave only the surname Chiu said the punishment was too harsh.

“A lot of people are demonstrating their loyalty these days, letting those in power know that they are abiding strictly by the law, and will discipline their students,” Chiu told RFA.

“There is a real issue with this in Hong Kong,” she said. “It’s not healthy when some people distort the law and create a situation that could put everyone at risk.”

A freelance illustrator and former secondary school teacher who goes by the nickname Vawongsir said suspension is generally reserved for serious mistakes.

‘White terror’

He said students who risk violating the draconian national security law, which was imposed on Hong Kong by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from July 1, 2020, should be taught the right way to behave, rather than being instantly punished.

“There has been less and less freedom in schools since the national security law took effect,” vawongsir said. “A lot of schools are already censoring themselves, punishing their students even if the government doesn’t pursue them for it.”

“It’s a kind of white terror, and it’s very unhealthy, and yet it’s becoming the norm,” he said. “I think a lot of schools are now going to copy [St Francis Xavier’s], which leads to an even greater sense of fear in schools.”

Social media comments in Hong Kong hit out at the punishment, saying the Hong Kong school was holding its pupils to higher standards than that achieved by most people in mainland China during the Oct. 1 National Day celebrations.

But on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, comments were different, largely supporting a heavy hand to exert greater control on Hong Kong in the wake of the 2019 protests.

Current affairs commentator Sang Pu said the incident was all about demonstrating loyalty and political correctness, and noted that some Hong Kong students had come out in support of the school’s action.

“Some students actually supported this, saying the three-day suspension was absolutely the right thing to do, and what’s wrong with being patriotic,” Sang said. “The school’s handling of this is similar to inciting students to engage in political struggle with each other [similar to the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976 in mainland China].”

“It’s a hateful way to behave, and it shows how sad things have gotten in Hong Kong today,” he said.

He said the students couldn’t have been accused of failing to stand for the flag, because they weren’t even present at the ceremony.

According to recent laws governing China’s national emblems and anthem, the national flag must be displayed in a position of prominence where it appears alongside the bauhinia flag of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

“The national flag, when raised and carried in a procession with the regional flag, shall be in front of the regional flag,” the guidelines state, while organizers must take care to retrieve flags used in ceremonies, and return any damaged flags or emblems to the government.

“They must not be displayed upside down, and must not be displayed or used in any way that undermines their dignity,” the guidelines state.

Recent legislation has criminalized any burning, soiling or trampling of the Chinese flag in Hong Kong, as well as the posting or publication of images of such actions.

The directive comes amid a city-wide crackdown on public criticism of the Hong Kong government and the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that has seen dozens of pro-democracy politicians and activists arrested for “subversion” after taking part in a democratic primary that was deemed a bid to undermine the government by voting against it in the Legislative Council (LegCo).

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.