Beijing
At least a dozen cities across China have eased COVID-19 restrictions following a wave of unprecedented protests last month, with Shanghai becoming the last metropolis to scrap tests for public transport and Urumqi reopening malls and restaurants for the first time in months.
In China’s biggest city, Shanghai, where protesters had called on President Xi Jinping to step down over his “zero-COVID” policy, authorities said on Sunday that residents will no longer need a negative test result to use public transport or enter outdoor venues such as parks and tourist attractions.
The easing follows similar moves by Beijing, Shenzhen, Chengdu and Tianjin, all of which cancelled the testing requirement for public transport on Saturday.
In far-western Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region where the anti-government protests first erupted, authorities reopened ski resorts and malls, and allowed restaurants to open their doors for takeaway services. They said cinemas, gyms and parks will also be permitted to open gradually, with limits on the number of people allowed to enter the venues.
It was the death of 10 people in a fire at a partially locked down building in Urumqi that triggered the November protests. The city had been locked down since August.
Some social media users at the time said victims had been unable to escape the blaze because of the COVID-19 restrictions, although authorities denied that was the case.
The protests, which spread to more than 20 cities across China, were an unprecedented show of civil disobedience on the mainland since Xi took power in 2012. In the days since, at least 12 cities across the country have rolled back some of the COVID-19 curbs, according to the state-owned Global Times tabloid, in what officials described as part of an “optimisation of epidemic control measures”.
Wang Guangfa, an expert at the Peking University First Hospital, told the tabloid that the easing of curbs should not be taken as a “complete opening up”.
“We have optimised our epidemic control measures in line with the characteristics of the virus variant, striking a new balance between epidemic control and social and economic activities,” he was quoted as saying.
“It’s unlikely that we’ll walk out of the pandemic in a short time this winter,” he said, noting that many countries were seeing a rise in cases amid the cold weather.
