China has suspended or closed the social media accounts of more than 1,000 critics of the government’s policies on the COVID-19 outbreak, as the country continues to open up.
The popular social media platform Sina Weibo said it had dealt with 12,854 violations including attacks on experts, scholars and medical workers and issued temporary or permanent bans on 1,120 accounts.
The ruling Communist Party has largely relied on the medical community to justify lockdowns, quarantine measures and mass testing, almost all of which were abruptly abandoned last month, prompting a surge in new cases that has stretched medical resources to the limit. The party does not allow direct criticism and imposes strict restrictions on freedom of speech.
The company “will continue to step up investigations and clean up all kinds of illegal content, and create a harmonious and friendly community environment for the majority of users,” Sina Weibo said in a statement on Thursday.
Criticism has largely focused on open-ended travel restrictions that have seen people confined to their homes for weeks, sometimes without adequate food or medical care. Anger was also caused by the requirement that anyone who potentially tested positive or had been in contact with the person must be confined for observation in a field hospital, where overcrowding, food and hygiene are commonly called for.
The social and economic costs ultimately led to rare street protests in Beijing and other cities, possibly influencing the party’s decision to quickly ease the strictest measures.
China is currently experiencing a surge in cases and hospitalizations in major cities and continues to spread to less developed areas with the start of the Lunar New Year travel rush, which will take place in the coming days. While international flights are still down, authorities say they expect domestic rail and air travel to double over the same period last year, with total numbers close to the 2019 holiday before the pandemic.
The Ministry of Transportation on Friday urged tourists to reduce travel and gatherings, especially if they are accompanied by the elderly, pregnant women, small children and people who are sick.
People using public transport are also advised to wear masks and pay special attention to personal health and hygiene, Vice Minister Xu Chengguang told reporters in a briefing.
However, China is pushing ahead with plans to end mandatory quarantines for people arriving from overseas from Sunday.
Beijing also plans to relax the requirement for students in city schools to have a negative COVID-19 test to enter campuses when classes resume on February 13 after the holiday break. While schools will be allowed to move classes online in the event of a new outbreak, they should return to in-person instruction as soon as possible, the city’s education bureau said in a statement Friday.
However, the end of mass testing, the very limited amount of basic data such as the number of deaths, infections and severe cases, and the possibility of the emergence of new variants have prompted governments elsewhere to impose virus testing requirements on travelers from China.
The World Health Organization has also expressed concern about the lack of data from China, while the US requires negative test results for people traveling from China within 48 hours of departure.
Chinese health authorities publish the number of new cases, severe cases and deaths, but these numbers only include officially confirmed cases and use a narrow definition of COVID-related deaths.
Authorities say that since the government ended mandatory testing and allowed people with mild symptoms to self-test and recover at home, they cannot provide a full picture of the latest outbreak.
On Sunday, the National Health Commission reported 10,681 new domestic cases, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the country to 482,057. Three new deaths were also reported in the previous 24 hours, bringing the total to 5,267.
These numbers are a fraction of those announced by the US, which puts the death toll at more than 1 million among 101 million cases.
But it is also smaller than the estimates released by some local governments. Zhejiang, a province on the east coast, said on Tuesday it was seeing about 1 million new cases a day.
China says testing requirements imposed by foreign governments – most recently Germany and Sweden – are not based on science and threatens unspecified measures. The spokeswoman said the situation was under control, and denied allegations of a lack of preparation for reopening.
If a variant appears in an outbreak, it is discovered through genetic sequencing of the virus.
Since the pandemic began, China has shared 4,144 sequences with GISAID, a global platform for coronavirus data. That’s just 0.04% of the number of reported cases – a rate more than 100 times less than the United States and almost four times less than neighboring Mongolia.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong also plans to reopen some border crossings with mainland China on Sunday and allow tens of thousands of people to cross daily without being quarantined.
The semi-autonomous city in southern China has been hit hard by the virus and land and sea border checkpoints with the mainland have been largely closed for nearly three years. Despite the risks, the reopening will provide a much-needed boost to Hong Kong’s tourism and retail sectors.