NEWS//Zero-tolerance

Zero-tolerance. That has been China's approach to combatting Covid. Now China is doubling down on its strategy. For example:

• Chaoyang, a district of Beijing with about four million people was under lockdown on November 11 because six new cases of Covid were discovered. Malls were shuttered. Residents were confined to their homes except in emergencies.

• Lanzhou, a city of four million, was shut down on October 26 due to 29 new infections. Bus and taxi services were suspended; more than 70 trains were canceled.

• Residents of Ruili, a Chinese city of 270,000 on the border with Myanmar, have undergone frequent Covid testing. One mother there noted that her two-year-old son has been swabbed for Covid infection 100 times in his lifetime.

• On Halloween, Shanghai's Disneyland was locked down because a woman in the park was discovered to have Covid. Tens of thousands of visitors and staff were forced to undergo coronavirus testing before they were allowed to leave the park.

AP News reports, "For authorities in Beijing, control over the virus has become a point of pride, a potent tool of propaganda — and proof, they say, of a superior form of governance. They often trumpet their success at keeping deaths relatively low, especially in contrast to the United States, whose COVID-19 response the Foreign Ministry spokesman has called a ‘total failure.’ China has reported about 4,600 deaths — compared to more than 755,000 in the U.S., a country with less than a quarter the population.”

“It’s becoming part of the official narrative that promotes that approach and links that to the superiority of the Chinese political system,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Sources: China Daily, CNN, The Guardian,  Wall Street Journal, AP News, Al Jazeera