Is China finally easing its zero Covid strategy?

China’s president Xi Jinping has shaken hands with more world leaders over the last two days than he has met in three years. Xi hasn’t worn a mask throughout the G20 summit: from the moment he and his opera singer wife stepped off the plane in Bali, emerging from a Covid cocoon. When the summit finishes tomorrow, Xi will go straight to Thailand to meet other Asian leaders at the APEC summit. His outgoing deputy Li Keqiang has also been meeting other southeast Asian leaders in Cambodia. For China’s leaders, pressing the flesh has been unthinkable since the pandemic first broke out in China in December 2019. Now the pathological zero Covid approach may be easing up.

 Xi’s appearance at the G20 coincides with some slight opening up for ordinary Chinese too. According to directions issued by the State Council in Beijing last Friday, quarantine has been reduced to eight days for close contacts of positive cases and new arrivals into the country (five days in a central quarantine centre and three at home), down from ten, while contacts of contacts will no longer be traced, tested or quarantined.