China covid free how

First, the accountant and the freelance writer were taken away. Then, the former tutor with a degree in English literature. And several days later, the police came for the editor at the Beijing publishing house. The four detained women were friends. They spent their free time in China’s capital as many curious, creative-minded young people did: hosting book clubs, watching movies, discussing social issues like feminism and L.G.B.T.Q. rights over barbecue. When protests against coronavirus restrictions broke out in November across China , including in Beijing, they attended. And now, they are among the first people known to have been formally arrested in connection with those protests. China is waging a campaign of intimidation against people who joined the demonstrations, which were the boldest challenge to the Communist Party’s rule in decades and an embarrassing affront to its leader, Xi Jinping. The party seems determined to warn off anyone who may have been emboldened by … [Read more...] about In China’s Crackdown on Protesters, a Familiar Effort to Blame Foreign Powers

Produced by ‘The Ezra Klein Show’ There are few stories that are more crucial to the world’s future than what’s happening in China. Take any of the most important issues of our time — climate change, geopolitics, the global economy, advanced technologies — and China is at the center of them. American politics itself has increasingly come to revolve around competition with China. In other words, what happens in China doesn’t stay in China — it reverberates through the global economy, the American political system and the international order. And a lot is happening in China right now. In November, China experienced what many have called its most significant protests since Tiananmen Square in 1989. In response, Beijing loosened its “zero Covid” policy, demonstrating a level of public responsiveness that shocked many observers of the increasingly authoritarian regime. However, that policy shift also unleashed a huge wave of infections and hospitalizations that puts the country’s … [Read more...] about There’s Been a Revolution in How China Is Governed

BEIJING — First, the police took away the think tank’s former graphic designer, then the young man who organized seminars, and eventually its founder. Another employee fled China ’s capital, fearing he would be forced to testify against his colleagues in rigged trials. “The anxiety is overwhelming, not knowing if they are coming for you,” said the employee, Yang Zili, a researcher at the Transition Institute of Social and Economic Research in Beijing, who has been in hiding since November. “It’s frightening because as they disappear, one friend after another, the police are not following any law. They just do as they please.” These are perilous days for independent civic groups in China, especially those that take on politically contentious causes like workers’ rights, legal advocacy and discrimination against people with AIDS. Such groups have long struggled to survive inside China’s ill-defined, shifting margins of official tolerance, but they have served as havens for socially … [Read more...] about In China, Civic Groups’ Freedom, and Followers, Are Vanishing

BEIJING — In their widening campaign against online “rumormongers” and other putative purveyors of social disorder, Chinese authorities have netted influential rights activists, freelance anticorruption sleuths and even a billionaire entrepreneur who championed the rights of poor migrants. Many of those detained in recent weeks remain in police custody. But the enforcers of Internet propriety, it seems, were not prepared for the online outrage stirred up by the arrest last week of a 16-year-old boy who had publicly questioned investigators over the mysterious death of a karaoke club manager in China’s northwest Gansu Province. On Monday, the police in Zhangjiachuan Hui Autonomous County apparently bowed to public pressure and released Yang Zhong, a middle school student who was among the first people to be charged under new regulations that criminalize the spreading of online rumors with up to three years in jail. The authorities contend the boy had simply confessed to his crimes … [Read more...] about China’s Crackdown Prompts Outrage Over Boy’s Arrest

BEIJING — The Chinese authorities on Friday announced the formal arrest of a well-known rights defender who last month took part in a private seminar where participants discussed the army’s violent suppression of the student-led protests of 1989 in Tiananmen Square. The decision to prosecute the activist, Pu Zhiqiang, a lawyer and a widely respected figure in China’s rights defense movement, provides further evidence of the Chinese government’s determination to silence even moderate reform advocates who have sought to work within the country’s legal system. In an announcement Friday night on its microblog account, the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau said Mr. Pu would face charges of creating a public disturbance, most likely the result of his participation in the seminar. Although the May 3 meeting was held at a private home, a photograph of the attendees was posted online at time when the government was deeply unnerved by the possibility that activists would try to … [Read more...] about China to Prosecute Pu Zhiqiang for Activism

BEIJING — China will stop requiring inbound travelers to go into quarantine beginning Jan. 8, the National Health Commission said on Monday in a major step toward easing curbs on its borders, which have been largely shut since 2020. China’s management of Covid-19 will also be downgraded to the less strict Category B from the current top-level Category A, the health authority said in a statement, as the disease has become less virulent and will gradually evolve into a common respiratory infection. Three years of zero-tolerance measures, from shuttered borders to frequent lockdowns, have battered China’s economy, fueling last month the mainland’s biggest show of public discontent since President Xi Jinping took power in 2012. But China made an abrupt policy U-turn this month, dropping nearly all of its domestic Covid curbs in a move that has left hospitals across the country scrambling to cope with a nationwide wave of infections. Strict requirements on inbound travelers … [Read more...] about China will end Covid quarantine rule for incoming travelers