Gérard Araud – What the Chinese revolt teaches us

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CHRONIC. The easing of Xi Jinping’s “zero Covid” policy proves that China is going through a delicate period. Europe could benefit from it.

By Gerard Araud

Lhe rejection of the “zero Covid” policy in China has provided, for the first time in decades, a national theme of protest to the population against constraints which are brutally imposed and which seem to be always renewed. Some demonstrations were even beginning to shout down the regime, even Xi Jinping himself. Opposite, the power, however authoritarian, had to retreat. Despite the risk of an explosion of the epidemic in an aging country with a still primitive health system, it gave cautious signs this week of an easing of the bans linked to the Covid and a greater recourse to the vaccination targeting the elderly.

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