As Ed pointed out last week, China has apparently turned a corner when it comes to zero-COVID. The BBC published a follow-up yesterday noting that despite no drop in the number of infections, some of the tough COVID controls are being dropped. Without really admitting it, it looks like zero COVID is over.

There has not been a significant drop in infections, yet public transport now no longer requires a PCR test result, bars and restaurants are slowly re-opening, and in some cases people are being allowed to isolate at home after catching Covid instead of going into centralised quarantine facilities.

From Tuesday test results are no longer needed to go into supermarkets, office buildings and some other public venues.

So when you examine what is happening here right now, the trajectory seems clear – the government appears to have quietly dumped zero Covid as a goal.

This does not mean that all Covid-related restrictions have ended – you still need to have taken a test in the past 48 hours to get into hospitals, schools, restaurants and gyms, for example. It also does not mean some restrictions won’t be around in, say, half a year.

But the stated goal of reducing each outbreak to zero new infections… gone.

The new plan appears to be to slow the spread of the virus, hopefully enabling the health system to cope, rather than trying crush the disease.

What’s most significant about that change is why it happened. Last month there was a deadly fire at a high-rise in Xinjiang, China. Firefighters arrived but couldn’t get their trucks close enough to douse the flames.

Urumqi, Xinjiang, roadblocks were placed in the community to prevent residents and vehicles from entering and exiting, making it difficult for firefighters to put out the fire even if they tried their best.#TheGreatTranslationMovement pic.twitter.com/3nIKH6YeYT

— The Great Translation Movement 大翻译运动官方推号 (@TGTM_Official) November 25, 2022

Officials blamed cars parked along narrow access roads but others claimed the cars couldn’t be moved either because the owners were locked in their buildings or because the car batteries were dead after months of lockdowns. There were also claims that the people trapped inside the burning building were either unable to leave or awaiting permission to leave. At least ten people were killed and video of a woman screaming inside the building circulated widely in China before censors could pull it down.

Anger over the high rise fire prompted protests in Xinjiang and elsewhere. People attending the protests weren’t just demanding an end to lockdowns, some were demanding more freedom of expression and in a few places there were chants calling on Xi Jinping to step down. Chinese censors did their best to hide all of the evidence of these protests but not quickly enough. Xi Jinping and state media ignored the protests as if they didn’t matter but less than two weeks later zero COVID seems to have finally ended. In short, it looks like the people won this round and the dictator is taking a step back.

Of course the power gained during COVID, to literally monitor and control the movement of everyone all the time, won’t be surrendered permanently. At any time Xi could announce a new emergency and use some future version of the health app to determine who can go where. The Chinese people may have won a brief reprieve but the country is still a communist police state.

Yesterday, CNN published a good report showing what China has been like under the zero COVID policies that are only now beginning to roll back. It’s hard to imagine anyone putting up with this except out of fear of what disobedience could mean for them.