Next China: Backing Down

Next China: Backing Down

In China, the government usually gets what it wants.

So, Beijing's U-turn on a plan to prevent people in the capital from entering public venues without proof of vaccination raised eyebrows. It’s unclear exactly what prompted the swift change, but Chinese social media users called the mandate an illegal cap on their freedoms and questioned the effectiveness of domestic vaccines.

“It’s likely that when the vaccine mandate became known there wasn’t just public resistance, they also faced opposition from the government,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, adding that the U-turn reflected a lack of broad political consensus on vaccines.

“This impasse can only be broken with the personal intervention by the top leader,” Huang said. “If the top leader is showing a lukewarm attitude that policy impasse will continue.”

It’s not known if President Xi Jinping is vaccinated, in contrast to other world leaders such as US President Joe Biden and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who got their shots on camera in 2020.

One person unhappy about the vaccine backdown was Joerg Wuttke, president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China. “This sudden policy U-turn will discourage other cities