AFP

China announced Wednesday a nationwide loosening of Covid restrictions following protests against the hardline strategy that grew into calls for greater political freedoms.

Anger over China’s zero-Covid policy — which involved mass lockdowns, constant testing and quarantines even for people who are not infected — stoked unrest not seen since the 1989 pro-democracy protests.

Under the new guidelines announced by the National Health Commission, the frequency and scope of PCR testing — long a tedious mainstay of life in zero-Covid China — will be reduced.

Lockdowns will also be scaled down and people with non-severe Covid cases can isolate at home instead of centralised government facilities.

And people will no longer be required to show a green health code on their phone to enter public buildings and spaces, except for “nursing homes, medical institutions, kindergartens, middle and high schools”.

The new rules scrap the forced quarantines for people with no symptoms or with mild cases.

“Asymptomatic infected persons and mild cases who are eligible for home isolation are generally isolated at home, or they can voluntarily choose centralised isolation for treatment,” the new rules read.

“Mass PCR testing only carried out in schools, hospitals, nursing homes and high-risk work units; scope and frequency of PCR testing to be further reduced,” they added. 

“People travelling across provinces do not need to provide a 48h test result and do not need to test upon arrival.”

China will also accelerate the vaccination of the elderly, the NHC said, long seen as a major obstacle to the relaxation of Beijing’s no-tolerance approach to Covid.

Rare demonstrations against the ruling Communist Party’s zero-Covid strategy broke out across China late last month.

They expanded into calls for more political freedoms, with some even calling for President Xi Jinping to resign.

Authorities cracked down on subsequent efforts to protest while easing a number of restrictions, with some Chinese cities tentatively rolling back mass testing and curbs on movement.

The capital Beijing, where many businesses have fully reopened, said this week that commuters were no longer required to show a negative virus test taken within 48 hours to use public transport.

Financial hub Shanghai — which underwent a brutal two-month lockdown this year — announced the same rules, with residents able to enter outdoor venues such as parks and tourist attractions without a recent test.

And once dominated by doom and gloom coverage of the dangers of the virus and scenes of pandemic chaos abroad, China’s tightly controlled media dramatically shifted tone to support a tentative moving away from zero-Covid.

The prevalent Omicron strain is “not at all like last year’s Delta variant”, Guangzhou-based medicine professor Chong Yutian said in an article published by the Communist Party-run China Youth Daily.

“After infection with the Omicron variant, the vast majority will have no or light symptoms, and very few will go on to have severe symptoms, this is already widely known,” he assured readers.

But analysts at Japanese firm Nomura on Monday calculated that 53 cities — home to nearly a third of China’s population — still had some restrictions in place.

Wednesday’s announcement came hours after the government released further data showing the crippling economic impacts of zero-Covid.

Imports and exports plunged in November to levels not seen since early 2020.

Imports in November fell 10.6 percent year-on-year, the biggest drop since May 2020, according to the General Administration of Customs. Exports fell 8.7 percent over the same period.

US e-cigarette manufacturer Juul Labs said on Tuesday it had reached a settlement with about 10,000 plaintiffs in California after the company was accused of marketing its products to teenagers.

The vaping giant did not disclose the amount of the settlements, which it said were related to more than 5,000 cases, but said the agreements “represent a major step toward strengthening Juul Labs’ operations and securing the company’s path forward.”

The complaints had been filed for personal injury, with some in consumer class action lawsuits, and others filed by government entities or Native American tribes.

Juul is battling to stay afloat after the US Food and Drug Administration found the company had failed to address safety concerns and ordered all its products off the market in the United States.

The company has appealed the decision but announced last month it had been forced to lay off around 400 employees and cut its operating budget by up to 40 percent.

Juul said in November it had secured financing from early investors to maintain its operations.

Europe is likely to scrape through this winter without cutting off gas customers despite reduced Russian supplies, but even adjusting to colder homes and paying more may not be enough in coming years, analysts say.

“I like a hot house, I have to admit… I really used a lot of gas,” said Sofie de Rous, who until this year kept her home on the Belgian coast at a toasty 21 degrees Celsius (70F).

But like millions of other Europeans, the 41-year-old employee at an architectural firm has had to turn down the thermostat after energy prices surged following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February.

Russia’s progressive reduction of gas supplies to Europe via pipeline triggered a bidding war for liquefied natural gas (LNG), sending prices sharply higher.

If certain countries like France and Spain froze prices for consumers, others like Belgium let suppliers more or less pass along the higher costs.

“I was a little panicked in the beginning,” said de Rous, who saw the gas bill to heat her 90-square-metre (970-square-foot) house in Oostduinkerke jump from 120 euros ($126) per month to 330 euros.

She has lowered her thermostat to 18 degrees and is looking into installing double-pane windows and a solar panel.

Like de Rous, the lack of concern about energy consumption of a whole generation of Europeans ended abruptly in 2022, and everyone is mindful of where their thermostat is set.

If previously natural gas was cheap and plentiful, it is now scarce and expensive.

The European wholesale reference price used to fluctuate little, hovering around 20 euros per megawatt hour. This year, it shot as high as 300 euros before dropping back to around 100 euros.

“It’s the most chaotic time I’ve witnessed in all of those years,” Graham Freedman, a European gas analyst at energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie, told AFP.

– Big drops in consumption –

Sky-high energy prices have caused numerous factories, particularly in Germany’s chemicals sector which was highly dependent upon cheap Russian gas, to halt operations.

But European nations were able to fill their gas reservoirs and no one has been cut off yet.

“Until February, the very idea of Europe without Russian energy was seen as impossible,” said Simone Tagliapietra, a senior fellow at the Bruegel think tank in Brussels.

“What was impossible became possible.”

A warm autumn that allowed many consumers to put off turning on their heating also helped put Europe in better position for the winter.

Overall, the reduction in EU gas consumption by consumers and industry was around 25 percent in October compared to the 2019-2021 average for the month, according to calculations by Bruegel.

In Germany, where half the households use gas for heat, data shows consumption down by 20 to 35 percent depending on the week.

“That’s much more than anyone expected,” said Lion Hirth, a professor of energy policy at the Hertie School in Berlin.

“And that’s completely contradictory to the talk that we’ve been hearing from doomsday talkers saying, people just don’t respond. People just keep heating. People don’t change their behaviour. People don’t respond to prices.”

In the space of several months Russia has lost its top gas customer, Europe, with purchases passing from 191 billion cubic metres in 2019 to 90 billion this year. 

Wood Mackenzie forecasts deliveries will fall to 38 billion cubic metres next year.

The EU has been able to import large quantities of LNG, but only by outbidding South Asian nations like Pakistan and India.

This has pushed these nations to increase their dependence on coal — negatively impacting global efforts to curb climate change.

– In 2023? –

Europe’s ability to import LNG has been limited by a lack of infrastructure. 

While France and Spain each had several terminals to unload LNG from tankers and convert it back into gas at the start of the Ukraine conflict, Germany didn’t have one.

And while construction of more LNG terminals is under way, in 2023, unlike at the beginning of this year, Europe will mostly have to do without Russian gas to fill its reservoirs.

This could set up an even fiercer bidding war between European and Asian nations for supplies.

“The key factor is most certainly going to be: what is the weather going to be like this winter,” said Laura Page, a gas analyst at commodity data firm Kpler.

“If we have a cold winter in Asia, and we have a cold winter in Europe… this fight will intensify.”

The problem is that LNG supplies are limited.

“There isn’t enough gas in the world at the moment to actually cope with that loss of supply from Russia,” said Wood Mackenzie’s Freedman.

New LNG projects to boost supply won’t be able to come on line before 2025, meaning Europeans will have to get used to living with homes heated to just 18 degrees.

China’s imports and exports plunged in November to levels not seen since early 2020, as strict Covid restrictions hit the economy hard, according to official figures released Wednesday. 

Beijing’s strict zero-Covid policy of snap lockdowns, travel curbs and daily mass testing has left businesses reeling, disrupted supply chains and dampened consumption. 

November imports fell 10.6 percent year-on-year, the biggest collapse since May 2020. 

Exports fell by 8.7 percent year-on-year, the biggest drop since February 2020, when the country was mired in the early stages of the pandemic. 

The threat of recession in the United States and Europe, coupled with soaring energy prices, is weakening demand for Chinese products. 

After nationwide anti-lockdown protests last week, the government has signalled a shift in messaging and local authorities have begun easing some restrictions — which may brighten the outlook in the coming months.   

But travel between provinces remains complicated and an economic recovery may take time, with health measures highly variable across the country. 

China’s factory activity shrank for a second straight month in November, official data last week showed, as large swathes of the country were hit by lockdowns and transport disruptions.

The Purchasing Managers’ Index — a key gauge of manufacturing in the world’s second-biggest economy — came in at 48.0, down from October’s 49.2 and well below the 50-point mark separating growth from contraction, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

Chinese leaders have set an annual economic growth target of about 5.5 percent, but many observers think the country will struggle to hit it, despite announcing a better-than-expected 3.9 percent expansion in the third quarter.