China’s leading paper, the People’s Daily, Xinhua News, and other state media confirmed the country will stick to its current stringent policies for fighting the COVID-19 virus, says the China Media Projects, and other media.
Growing economic pressure and serious doubts on whether the policies of lockdowns would be effective against the Omikron mutant did raise doubts about the current policies, but China’s top media left no doubts: a change of its policies is firmly rejected by the top leadership.
The China Media Project:
The word “persistence” appears three times at the very top of the readout:
“The meeting pointed out that since the onset of the covid epidemic, we have persisted in people first and life first, we have persisted in defense against import [of the virus] and against internal recurrence, we have persisted in dynamic zero, and therefore significant strategic results in prevention and control have been achieved through constant adjustment of prevention and control measures.”
Further down in the readout is language about “unwaveringly persisting in the general policy of ‘dynamic zero,’” and immediately after comes the phrase “persistence is victory” (坚持就是胜利), which CMP analyzed yesterday as a recent focus in official CCP discourse of late.
This firm confirmation of the current policies suggests that any relaxation of the lockdowns is not on the political agenda for the months to come.
