After three years of tightly controlling people’s lives, portraying Covid-19 as a deadly threat and mocking the « chaos » reigned in the United States, Chinese propaganda struggled to find the tone at the opening hour.
On December 7, Beijing announced the end of its zero Covid policy: no more generalized tests, no more isolation centers for the sick, no more confinement for entire cities. No more daily count of the number of infected people either, nor that of the number of deaths due to Covid-19: on Sunday December 25, the National Health Commission announced that it would end the publication of these figures after admitting that it was « impossible » to continue to measure the evolution of the epidemic since the tests were no longer compulsory.
Under these conditions, the coronavirus is spreading at exceptional speed, creating a first wave more like a tsunami in a population that had never experienced Covid-19 until now. As elsewhere, hospitals are beginning to saturate and crematoriums are running full. But this new situation is more difficult to defend for a regime that has made the low number of victims in recent years a source of legitimacy, even if this policy was costly for a large part of the population, deprived of freedom.
One of the symbols of this 180 degree turn in the official communication of the authorities is one of the new slogans in vogue: “Each person is individually responsible for their own health. »
Times-face
The message first appeared in a letter sent to citizens of Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei, south of Beijing – an area that dropped mandatory PCR testing as early as November 13, before backtracking amid public concern. confused citizens.
The same message appeared on 1is December, on the tallest skyscraper in Canton, the capital of Guangdong, one of the first cities in China to relax controls in the face of Covid-19. Since then, it has been taken up everywhere, displayed on banners in yellow sinograms on a red background, and reaffirmed by the authorities, accompanying for example a press release advising students to exercise to strengthen their immune system.
A few weeks earlier, in mid-November, a series of editorials in the very official People’s Daily were still calling “resolutely apply the zero Covid policy”. The State, which interfered even in the intimacy of the Chinese without leaving them the choice to ” protect them ” of a threat constantly amplified by propaganda, today advises citizens to fend for themselves.
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