{"id":52219,"date":"2023-01-29T20:00:47","date_gmt":"2023-01-29T11:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/jan\/29\/chinese-cost-covid-xi-lockdowns-china"},"modified":"2023-01-29T20:00:47","modified_gmt":"2023-01-29T11:00:47","slug":"it-was-all-for-nothing-chinese-count-cost-of-xis-snap-decision-to-let-covid-rip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=52219","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It was all for nothing\u2019: Chinese count cost of Xi\u2019s snap decision to let Covid rip"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After three years of lockdowns, the country was ill prepared for its abrupt \u2018freedom\u2019. Now, with some estimating 1m deaths, public anger is growing<\/p>\n<p>When Sunny* thinks back to March last year, she laughs ruefully at the ordeal. The 19-year-old Shanghai student spent that month locked in her dormitory, unable to shop for essentials or wash clothes, even banned from showering for two weeks over Covid fears. In April, the entire city locked down.<\/p>\n<p>It was the beginning of the chaos of 2022, as local Chinese authorities desperately tried to follow President Xi Jinping\u2019s zero-Covid decree while facing the most virulent strain of the virus yet: Omicron. \u201cEveryone was panicking, no one was ready,\u201d she tells the <em>Observer<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/jan\/29\/chinese-cost-covid-xi-lockdowns-china\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After three years of lockdowns, the country was ill prepared for its abrupt \u2018freedom\u2019. Now, with some estimating 1m deaths, public anger is growingWhen Sunny* thinks back to March last year, she laughs ruefully at the ordeal. The 19-year-old Shanghai s&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3542,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,50,1066,914,2458,299,79,42,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-china","category-coronavirus","category-infectious-diseases","category-omicron-variant","category-science","category-society","category-world-news","category-xi-jinping"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3542"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52219"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52227,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52219\/revisions\/52227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}