When it was widely expected in China that Xi Jinping would no longer insist on the Zero-Covid policy, a commentary published in the state newspaper on November 14 mentioned the need to insist on the Zero-Covid policy nine times and even suggested that “epidemic prevention and control should be a routine procedure.”
On November 15, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) People’s Daily newspaper ran a commentary which mentioned that “unswervingly implementing the overall policy of ‘Zero Covid’” was a decision made at the November 10 Politburo meeting chaired by Xi Jinping, and that the “optimization program” recently proposed by the State Council is not a relaxation of prevention and control, let alone is it giving up the policy.
The article said, “The implementation of the Zero Covid policy is determined by of the CCP’s Central Committee under comrade Xi Jinping. … Adhering to the zero Covid policy is the bottom line of epidemic prevention and control for a large country of 1.4 billion people.”
The article does not mention when the zero Covid policy will end, but only emphasized the need not to give up.
Source: Radio Free Asia, November 15, 2022
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/Xinwen/wulb-11152022191929.htmli