From the continent of ‘Zero’ to the territory of ‘Weed’?

China has eased its high-intensity quarantine policy. Chinese quarantine officials wearing protective gear on November 28, 2022. ⓒAP Photo Has China finally crossed the river of Corona? In 2022, the world constantly returned to its daily life. Social distancing has been lifted and borders have been opened. China was an exception. Under the stance that not a single infected person is allowed, the government has adhered to an extremely high-intensity quarantine policy for the past three years. If other countries went over to the territory of ‘With Corona’, China alone remained on the ‘Zero Corona’ continent across the river. In December, a forward-looking change came to China’s iron-clad response to COVID-19. News that local governments such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin have lowered the level of quarantine spread one after another. On December 7, the State Council of China officially announced 10 measures that greatly ease the epidemic prevention and control measures. In the meantime, the Chinese government has quarantined all confirmed patients in facilities regardless of symptoms, but this measure opened the way for asymptomatic and mild confirmed patients to choose’self-isolation’ and stay at home. Antipathy to ‘facility quarantine’ has built up among Chinese residents to the extent that there is a saying, “Isolation facilities are scarier than Corona.” The obligation to submit PCR negative results when traveling between regions has also been lifted. PCR negative confirmation is not required even when entering public places other than facilities vulnerable to infection. This is a major change following the ‘blank protests’ that broke out in various parts of China and abroad at the end of November. Protesters who took to the streets protesting the repressive containment policy said, “I don’t want PCR. I want freedom” “Xi Jinping step down! Step down from the Communist Party!” shouted slogans, etc. It is interpreted that the Chinese government, confirming the angry public sentiment, has accelerated the search for an exit from high-intensity quarantine in the wake of the people’s demands. Park Min-sook, a researcher at the China Economic and Trade Team at the Institute for International Economic Policy, carefully predicted the situation. She said, “I think it will still be difficult to say categorically that ‘zero corona’ is over. However, the remarks from the CCP leadership after the protests are clearly a different message than before.” Deputy Prime Minister Chunlan Sun, who is known as China’s quarantine command tower, said at a meeting with experts from the National Health Commission on November 30, “As the symptoms of the Omicron mutation are less lethal, many people have been vaccinated, and experience in preventing corona has accumulated, the war against corona has begun. has entered a new phase,” he said. The Hong Kong reported that “it is the first time that a high-ranking official in China has acknowledged a change in the nature of the virus without warning that Omicron could still cause many deaths in the populous China.” Although espoused within China, warnings have been raised outside China that the zero-corona strategy is not sustainable. The Omicron mutation has evolved in the direction of lowering the fatality rate and becoming stronger than the Corona 19 original type and delta mutation. As Omicron became the dominant species around the world from late 2021 to early 2022, most countries that were actively quarantined, such as Korea, Australia, and Singapore, changed their response stance. Jang Young-wook, an associate research fellow at the Institute for International Economic Policy, said, “Just as the existing quarantine measures were unable to cope with Omicron when Omicron spread in full swing in Korea earlier this year, similar pressure gradually accumulated in China, making it difficult to contain the spread of the virus any longer.” said. China’s zero corona, which is so powerful that it is unmatched, has suppressed the Omicron epidemic for a longer time than other countries, but now its limits are being revealed. In the past month, the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in China has increased rapidly. While the effect of modeling quarantine, which predicted 1.3 million to 2.1 million deaths, was reduced, the damage and cost gradually became clearer. The ‘Urumqi fire accident’ in Xinjiang, which became the fuse of the blank protest, clearly shows the contradiction of zero corona. After a catastrophe in an apartment building in Urumqi that left 19 dead, a video circulated outside a barricaded apartment complex of people shooting water at a burning apartment. Claims that the blockade prevented rescue and evacuation in time quickly gained momentum. Xinjiang’s Weigu’er region has been under lockdown for over 100 days. Earlier in September, a bus transporting residents to a quarantine facility overturned, killing 27 people. A series of incidents in which the zero corona threatened residents rather than protecting their safety ignited complaints that had accumulated. The combination of social and economic damage that has been accumulating for a long time and the irrationality that the people feel firsthand has sounded a warning that is difficult for the Communist Party leadership to ignore. In light of the recent series of measures, the Chinese government seems to be standing in front of a bridge heading to With Corona. If it enters this bridge, considerable damage is expected even then, and the current difficulty that China is facing is that there is no suitable plan to reduce the damage. According to a Chinese paper published in the , if mainland China eases quarantine measures for Corona 19 like Hong Kong, the number of confirmed cases could rise to 233 million and the death toll could rise to 2 million. Citing the modeling results of Airfinity, a British information analysis company, 〈Nature〉 predicted that if China ended zero corona, 160 million to 280 million people would be infected in three months and as a result, 1.3 million to 2.1 million people would die. reported that it could be Estimates vary, but it is estimated that more than 1 million deaths will occur. It is necessary to look specifically at the meaning of the death toll of 1 million. As of December 8, the cumulative number of deaths from COVID-19 worldwide officially counted at 6.6 million. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, 1.08 million deaths have occurred in the United States. The United States has the highest number of COVID-19 deaths in the world. In the United States, this number of people died over three years, but in China, the death toll is likely to increase in a shorter period of time. Containing the epidemic at a low level with a blocking strategy, countries that eased quarantine during the Omicron outbreak showed a pattern of exploding confirmed cases and deaths. The US current affairs weekly 〈Time〉 covered the case of Hong Kong in early 2022 in an article titled ‘China’s Zero-COVID Trap’ on December 1st. Hong Kong, which had implemented an oppressive and strong quarantine policy comparable to mainland China, was pushed under the pressure of Omicron, which had a high propagation power, and the strict social distancing it had adhered to so far lost its power. In Hong Kong, a city with a population of 7.5 million, about 9,000 people died in the 10 weeks between February and April. If you look at the graph of COVID-19 deaths per 1 million population, Hong Kong’s graph at this time is sharp as if an icicle has been turned upside down (see