China’s Local Government Cancelled COVID Test After Public Outcry

According to media reports, since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) lifted the “Zero-COVID” policy last December, it no longer requires large scale COVID screening test for the entire population. However, at noon on January 24th in Dongxiang District, Jiangxi Province, an official announcement was issued stating that COVID test would be conducted on January 25th and 26th for the entire local population. This triggered public outrage online and many are criticizing the government on Chinese social media platform Weibo. Soon after, the authority removed the announcement. A notice released by Dongxiang local government on WeChat states that due to the “Chinese New Year Transportation” surge in traffic, in order to ensure health of the residents, free COVID tests will be provided in the whole district. Within a few hours, the announcement was seen 150 million times. The authorities subsequently deleted the post at 5 pm.

The full-scale COVID test, according to the local pandemic prevention and control office, is coordinated by Fuzhou City, with the aim of performing a more precise control of the population. The prevention and control office went on to clarify that the COVID test is not mandatory. Beijing announced 10 measures to optimise pandemic control on December 7th of last year, which eases the pandemic control in mainland China.

The strong public pushback to the COVID testing mandated by the Chinese government at all levels of authorities showed that the previous policy of total and harsh “Zero-Covid” policy was a total failure. However, as the Communist dictatorship continues to exist, failed policies will be rolled out one after another. The only way to end it is to end the regime itself.