Covid is complicating China’s efforts to re-engage with the world
Foreign critics have seized on the country’s lack of transparency
IN HIS ANNUAL New Year’s Eve address, President Xi Jinping struck an unusually measured tone. There was no call for unification with Taiwan, unlike the previous year, and none of the dark warnings about external forces that he voiced at a Communist Party congress in October. “We cherish peace and development and value friends and partners,” he said on December 31st. At home it is “only natural for different people to have different concerns or hold different views on the same issue,” he added.
This article appeared in the China section of the print edition under the headline “Data, diplomacy and disease”
From the January 14th 2023 edition
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