China Stages Thousands-Strong New Year’s Eve Countdowns as Coronavirus Rages

Residents watch firework in front of Victoria Harbour at midnight on New Years Sunday Jan.
AP Photo/Anthony Kwan
John Hayward

Chinese state media over the weekend highlighted huge New Year’s Eve celebrations across the country, with one of the biggest at Shougang Park in the capital of Beijing – even though China claims to be experiencing a ravaging national outbreak of the Wuhan coronavirus.

China’s state-run Global Times ran a stunning pictorial essay in the small hours of New Year’s Day that showed thousands of people packed elbow-to-elbow into Shougang Park, holding up a sea of smartphones to capture photos and video of the enormous light show and exuberant celebrations.

On the morning of New Year’s Day, a huge crowd braved cold temperatures to watch the first flag-raising ceremony of the year at Tiananmen Square:

The Global Times interviewed New Year’s Eve celebrants who expressed relief that dictator Xi Jinping’s harsh policy of quarantines and citywide lockdowns was behind them:

“So unlike yesterday, now’s the time for us to say Happy new year.” Shanghai-based Vicky Li shared the song “Happy New Year” by Swedish group ABBA in a friends’ group on WeChat in the early morning of the new year.

Having gone through a two-month-long lockdown last year and just having recovered from COVID-19, she can’t wait to get started to plan a family trip to Sanya, China’s premier beach destination.

“Change is ahead,” she said. Li isn’t alone in feeling hopeful about 2023. Hundreds of millions of Chinese people that have been fighting the COVID-19 pandemic for the past three years share the optimism. For many, life has changed, but what remains unchanged is hope.

The Global Times reported Chinese social media was bubbling with “wishes for happiness and good health,” videos of huge street parties and fireworks displays, and tourists looking forward to a busy travel season during Lunar New Year, which begins later this month. All were delighted that travel restrictions have been lifted and borders reopened.

Not a single mention was made in the Global Times New Year coverage of the gigantic coronavirus wave rolling across China, filling hospitals to bursting and keeping funeral homes busy around the clock as millions of new infections spread with astounding speed. After almost three years of treating its people like prisoners and hectoring the Western world for not doing the same, the Chinese Communist Party suddenly decided not only to loosen its harsh prevention policies, but to pretend Chinese coronavirus does not exist at all.

The rest of the world is considerably less thrilled with China’s new attitude of wide-open borders and studious ignorance. The World Health Organization’s (W.H.O.) remarkable patience with China finally ran out last week, resulting in unprecedented public criticism of Beijing for concealing vital data on infections and deaths from the rest of the world.

A growing list of countries, including the United States, is moving quickly to impose the kind of travel restrictions that were harangued as “xenophobic” by the Chinese Communist Party and Westerners under its influence in 2020. On Sunday, Morocco became the first country to ban Chinese travelers entirely.

The Financial Times quoted a bizarre pre-recorded New Year’s Eve address from China’s authoritarian ruler Xi Jinping in which he claimed his previous draconian policies were not wrong, and neither is his new incredibly lax policy of ignoring Chinese coronavirus to death:

“Since the outbreak of the epidemic, we have always put people first and life first, adhered to scientific and precise prevention and control, optimized and adjusted prevention and control measures according to the time and situation, and maximized the protection of people’s lives and health,” he said.

Xi added: “After arduous efforts, we have overcome unprecedented difficulties and challenges . . . While it is still a struggle, everyone is working hard with perseverance, and the dawn is ahead. Let’s work harder, persistence means victory, and unity means victory.”

This New Year’s Eve address was the first time Xi has directly addressed the coronavirus wave in three weeks. Xi’s government reported exactly one coronavirus fatality for the week on Friday.

Analysts told the Financial Times that Communist leaders are facing a significant crisis of confidence from their normally obedient population, and their new “what, me worry?” attitude might be a way of intimidating the public out of complaining. Communist censors are reportedly working overtime to delete social media posts about the wave of sickness and death rolling through China while doing all they can to boost optimistic happy thoughts about 2023.

“We can see very clearly that Xi Jinping is badly wounded in the sense that his prestige and authority have suffered tremendously. His claim that the Chinese system is the best in the world is now subject to serious questioning,” ventured Willy Lam of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Lam doubted the Communist Party would be able to propagandize the public into completely ignoring a virus threat that is hitting “senior cadres, their parents, and retired senior cadres” in addition to ordinary people. The cadres might, however, be willing to take direction from the blizzard of optimism in Chinese state media and the Party’s manic focus on looking to the future instead of dwelling on the present.

Other analysts suggested Xi had little choice but to loosen up on his lockdown policies after unprecedented public demonstrations across China in November, so the new do-nothing approach could be a way of making the people feel guilty for getting the Western-style “reopening” they demanded. The events of the past few weeks suggest those demonstrations were a real threat to Xi’s power.

Reuters chatted with some men and women on the streets of Beijing on Monday and could find no one who expressed deep concerns about the current coronavirus wave. Everyone who talked to Reuters was looking forward to Lunar New Year and relieved that life was returning to “normal.”

Reuters noticed that on the rare occasions Chinese state media mentioned the coronavirus over the New Year weekend, it was to assure the public that the outbreak is already over:

Infections in the cities of Beijing, Guanzhou, Shanghai and Chongqing are close to ending, news outlet Caixin said on Sunday, citing researchers. But infections will peak in the urban regions of Sichuan, Shaanxi, Gansu and Qinghai in the latter half of January, they added.

As Reuters drily noted, no other nation on Earth has claimed zero fatalities during a huge spike in Chinese coronavirus infections, and China’s absurdly low death count is “inconsistent with rising demand reported by funeral parlors in several cities.”

Virologists not under the control of the Chinese Communist Party told the South China Morning Post (SCMP) on Monday that not only is the current wave of omicron-strain infections not over, but China can expect to face several large re-infection aftershocks, possibly including new strains and mutations that are resistant to vaccines and can overcome natural immunity. 

China’s unique problems are that its vaccines do not work very well, its vulnerable elderly population has resisted inoculation, and its lockdown policies prevented its people from developing natural immunity. Virologists told the SCMP that several new vaccine-resistant omicron variants have been detected in the United States and Europe, but they are not creating the strain on hospitals – and funeral parlors – noted in China.

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