Chinese Cities’ Plans to Ban Unvaccinated from Public Facilities Triggers Online Backlash

A media activist, researcher and educator currently based in Hong Kong. My Chinese writings are in inmediahk.net and my Twitter account is @oiwan.

A few dozen Chinese cities have introduced restrictive policies banning unvaccinated people from visiting public venues including schools, hospitals, mass transportation and shopping malls. More cities are expected to adopt similar policies.

The policy, which was announced without much explanation, came as a shock to many citizens who had been repeatedly assured that China has the COVID-19 pandemic under control, thanks to the flooding of positive news and messages on social media during the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party in early July.

Below is a celebratory message circulated on Chinese social media on July 2:

China hopes to reach a 70 per cent vaccination rate by the end of 2021. Thus far, the country has given 1.38 billion doses, about 48 per cent of its total population. However, the distribution has been rather imbalanced. In big cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou the vaccination rate is more than 80 per cent. As for second-and third-tier cities and rural counties, the rate has fallen far behind. 

As the Delta variant spreads across Asia, virologists anticipate that the efficacy of the Chinese vaccines may go down by up to 20 per cent. However, domestic news outlets quoted China’s prominent epidemiologist Zhong Nanshan that Chinese vaccines had been proven effective on variants. Some critics argue that China has yet to release adequate third-stage clinical data about the vaccines, which Zhong attributes to China’s lack of COVID-19 patients to test.

A hashtag meaning ‘a proud aristocratic speech’ was attached to Zhong’s speech to highlight China’s complacency in fighting against the pandemic.

The new restrictive policy posed a sharp contrast to all the positive messages circulating online in the past two weeks.  In addition, the lack of explanation in the governmental announcement has invited a flood of criticisms. Below is an announcement issued by Jinjiang city in Fujian province via mobile messaging: 

The policy inconsistency has raised many questions like @xie-nm-ni-cheng says on Weibo:

Although people with medical reasons can be exempted from the restriction, it is not easy to get medical proof. Below is one experience shared on Weibo by @yi-zhang-jing-zi:

Other Weibo users@sheng-bu-hui-chuanpoints out that the policy may infringe citizens’ privacy:

Some are also worried that similar tactics would be applied in other policy areas in the future, such as zhi-tien-shou-wan-zhe says:

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