Officials in China’s capital are striving to contain a coronavirus outbreak while avoiding public anger of the kind that has erupted in Shanghai.
With new cases of the coronavirus continuing to accumulate in Beijing, officials over the weekend introduced sweeping new restrictions while stopping short of a full lockdown, a sign of the political and economic challenges that controlling an outbreak in China’s capital poses. As the five-day May Day holiday began on Saturday, local officials announced a ban on dining in restaurants until Wednesday. They also said that as of Thursday, proof of a negative test within the last week would be required to enter public spaces, including public transportation. And they ordered the closure of Universal Beijing Resort, one of the city’s major tourist attractions. Those new restrictions followed three rounds of mandatory testing for nearly all of the city’s 22 million residents, and a decision on Thursday to close Beijing’s schools, without specifying when they would reopen. Beijing has recorded more than 300 cases since April 22, including 59 on Saturday, the most so far in one day. But unlike other Chinese cities, including the southern economic hub of Shenzhen, that have locked down after detecting just a few cases, Beijing has continued to seal off only certain buildings or neighborhoods. Many residents are still free to move around the city. The more measured approach reflects the competing pressures that officials in the city must balance. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has doubled down on the country’s policy of stamping out local transmission — making it the last major country trying to do so — and has tied success in that effort to the Chinese Communist Party’s political legitimacy. Beijing, as the seat of the government, has enormous symbolic importance, and for the past two years it has largely avoided major Covid flare-ups. But a full-scale lockdown would require enormous manpower and planning to execute smoothly.
