On October 11, Chinese Party newspaper People’s Daily (人民日报) published an article titled “Dynamic Zero Is Sustainable and Must Be Adhered To” (“动态清零”可持续而且必须坚持).
The article stresses that although the epidemic poses a real challenge, China must stick to its ‘zero Covid strategy,’ which is all about the speedy detection of new cases, followed by a quick response to curb the spread of the virus immediately. The article says:
“We must be realistic and see that China is a large country with a population of more than 1.4 billion people, where there is uneven regional development and not enough medical resources. Loosening our prevention & control measures will certainly lead to an increased risk of infection, and once the scale bounces out of control, the spread of the epidemic is bound to cause a serious impact on economic and social development. Ultimately, we would pay a higher price and our loss will be greater. Sticking to the dynamic zero strategy provides us with a better balance between epidemic prevention & control and economic and social development; allowing us to achieve the biggest efficiency of prevention & control at minimal cost, while minimizing the big impact of the epidemic on economic and social development. “
The author of the article is “Zhong Yin” (仲音). Previous articles published by the Party newspaper relating to China’s epidemic policy and stressing that dynamic zero is the best option were also attributed to Zhong Yin.
“Zhong Yin is the central government voice,” one commenter suggested, with the name sounding similar to the words for ‘central government’ (“仲音..中央的音”).
People’s Daily has since long used homophonous pen names to transmit official Chinese Communist Party views (read more here).
The article comes at a time when discussions on the future of China’s zero Covid strategy are intensifying while various cities and regions are stepping up their zero Covid game.
Since there is uncertainty among the people about how long they will have to deal with Health Code systems, unexpected lockdowns, travel restrictions, mandatory quarantines, etc., any official publication relating to the potential future of China’s Covid strategy inescapably receives a lot of attention.
In June of 2022, an official Chinese media report introduced Beijing’s epidemic prevention strategy as continuing for “the coming five years” (“未来五年”). Those four words then flooded social media and caused commotion among netizens who interpreted this as a sign that China’s current Covid strategy would continue at least five more years. Although the media outlet’s editor-in-chief soon responded and blamed reporters for getting it all mixed up, many netizens were confused and wrote that the idea of living with the current measures for so many years shocked and scared them.
The current article by People’s Daily has also been shared many times on social media platform Weibo, where one hashtag dedicated to the topic received over 240 million views on Tuesday (#动态清零可持续而且必须坚持#).
Although one post featuring the article received over 18,000 likes and approximately 1500 comments, not a single one of them was visible at time of writing.
The official People’s Daily account also published the post but did not allow people to comment on it at all.
One Weibo user joked: “Ah, is this what they mean with ‘dynamic zero’?”
Chinese media outlet The Observer (观察者网) posted about the topic, but despite Weibo showing that there were over 1800 replies, none of these reactions were visible. Clicking on the discussion thread only showed a notification saying: “Sorry, this content is temporarily unavailable.”
The same goes for a Sohu News post, which showed that there were over 1000 replies but none were visible.
The strict control of online discussions on this topic led to increasing confusion. One person wondered: “Does this [article] represent the official central government stance, or is it an assumption by People’s Daily?”
“Reading this kind of news just makes me despair,” another person wrote.
“The key is the absurdity of the epidemic prevention measures across the country now, people can’t stand it. If we’d just stick to scientific prevention measures everyone would be ok with it.”
Another Weibo user wondered: “Could People’s Daily open up its comment section, or are they to afraid to do so?”
By Manya Koetse
With contributions by Miranda Barnes.
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