China | Surfing the second wave

China goes from zero-covid to zero restrictions

It has given up on any form of testing

TOPSHOT - People dine at a restaurant at a shopping mall in Beijing on May 26, 2023.
Image: JADE GAO/AFP via Getty Images
|SHANGHAI

There can be few things as symbolic of post-zero-covid China as a photo that popped up on social media in April. It showed that one of the many mobile booths used for administering covid tests in Shanghai had been turned into a bar. A year ago hundreds of thousands of Shanghai residents were being forcibly removed from their homes and taken to fever wards on the outskirts of the city. Now they are busy sipping beer.

This article appeared in the China section of the print edition under the headline “Surfing the second wave”

From the June 3rd 2023 edition

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