Nothing normal under the sun: a few observations on China's new normal.

The word "surreal" may be overused nowadays, but it really is the only way to describe the experience of being back in China for the first time since before the pandemic. In most ways it feels like picking up my life where I left it, in a society where very little seems to have changed, and the fear of the virus is already a distant memory. I am, it must be said, glad to be in a place where you do not need to wash your hands all the time like a hypochondriac, or worry about getting too close to people on the street, or wonder whether your runny nose is just an ordinary cold or if you should go and get tested just to stay on the safe side. 

On the other hand, home has never felt so far away. It may only be an 11-hour flight back to where I'm from, but the pandemic makes Europe and China feel almost as far apart as they did when it took weeks of journey by ship to travel from one to the other. The world was already becoming more divided, but Covid-19 has created fissures that may take decades to heal. 

Now that I've been back in China for five weeks (of which the first two were spent in quarantine), I have a few observations to share on China's post-pandemic "new normal".

1) Daily life in China feels normal

Life in China really does feel like it's back to its pre-Covid "normality". Between the initial lockdown, mass testing, the isolation of Hubei from China and then of China from the world (see below), the virus has been stamped out. Fear of infection has dissipated, and the general public trusts that the pandemic has been effectively controlled. People wear a mask on public transport because they have to, but many no longer wear one, or wear one pulled down, when they walk the streets. Even those who do wear a mask no longer seem to have any real fear of infection; it's more that putting on a face-covering before going out has become almost automatic, and you never know when a place may require it. It's also a way of signalling that you are doing your bit to stop the pandemic. The rather odd fashion of hanging your mask around your sleeve when you aren't wearing it has also taken shape.   

In Chinese cities all workplaces and commercial establishments are open again, with no particular restrictions in place. I have seen signs in public offices and gyms asking people to maintain a one-meter distance to avoid infection, but nobody seems to take them seriously anymore, even in police stations. Quite simply, getting infected is no longer a matter of concern.

Travelling within Mainland China is also not a problem anymore, except if you happen to pass through a place exactly when one of the occasional new outbreaks occur. This is unlikely, but if it does happen you run a risk of being caught up in a new lockdown, or having restrictions placed on you when you go back home. The authorities will pull no stops to make sure that any new outbreaks of Covid-19 remain contained. I know a Beijinger who visited Qingdao (where an outbreak was put down a few weeks ago) during the national holidays. After returning to Beijing, she was required to take a PCR test by the government. 

Happily, the fear of foreigners as carriers of the virus and the resultant xenophobia also seems to have died down. Since I have come back, I have not noticed anyone being scared of sitting next to me in the subway, avoiding me on the street, or showing me any particular hostility. No shops or bars have refused me entry, either. Last spring, all of these occurrences were common across China for foreign-looking people. Foreigners can still encounter problems when travelling, however. I have heard of recent cases of tourist sites rejecting foreigners outright, or demanding that only foreigners produce evidence of a PCR test, and it seems that hotels are also being more difficult than usual. But as long as you stay put, at least, being a foreigner no longer seems to be a problem. 

In general it feels like life in China, or at least in Beijing, has not changed too much since before the pandemic. Quite simply, after a brief interruption, the Chinese system has returned to what passes for normality here. A few restaurants have closed, and that's about it. While I realise that it is risky to make observations about the state of China's economy based on personal impressions of life in a major city, I will note that the Beijing subway seems to be as packed as it always was, suggesting that there has not been a large exodus of migrant workers who have lost their jobs. The traffic is also as bad as ever. Another unwelcome discovery is that Beijing's notorious air pollution hasn't improved one bit since before the pandemic. Good days continue to alternate with days when the AQI reaches 150-200. This might also suggest that economic activity is back to normal, although there are various different factors that contribute to Beijing's air pollution, so this inference is open to debate.

2) China has basically cut itself off from the world 

A lot has been said about the impressive way in which China has brought new transmissions of Covid-19 down to zero. Recently there have been a lot of takes blaming European and American governments for "arrogantly" failing to learn from the measures taken by China and other Asian countries. While there is truth to this, people often fail to mention one aspect of how China, and many of its neighbours in the Asia/Pacific, are keeping themselves pandemic-free: they have basically isolated themselves from the world, with extreme limitations on entries and flights and strict centralised quarantines which sometimes leave even their own citizens unable to come home. Quarantine alone is not enough, since imported cases can still pose a slight risk; as far as possible, entries from abroad need to be curtailed. The government is now ensuring China does not suffer a second wave of infections by cutting the country off from international travel to an extent unprecedented in modern history.

I detailed the process I had to go through to enter China in my previous post: it is so expensive, troublesome and unpleasant that only the truly determined would consider going through with it. The idea of doing it regularly is absurd. And the quarantine isn't even the only obstacle standing in the way of those who want to travel to China. A major issue is the way the government limits the number of inbound flights, which has driven ticket prices to crazy highs. It's particularly bad in the US, where the few direct flights to China can cost figures like 8,000 USD. Testing requirements have also been made more taxing. Currently, in most countries you are required to get a PCR test and an antibody test within 72 or even 48 hours of boarding a flight to China, and email the (negative) results to the Chinese embassy to get them certified before the flight. In many places these conditions are going to be very hard to fulfil. At the very least, there will be a serious risk of missing your flight. 

To cap it all, after a brief hiatus it seems like the authorities are once again banning entry to all foreign nationals, even if they have valid visas. Over the last two days, Chinese embassies in quite a few countries have published notices like this one, and more are bound to follow. As always, they have provided absolutely no advanced warning, causing people to lose expensive tickets. This is clearly a reaction to the second wave currently underway in much of the Northern hemisphere. Even though the vast majority of "imported cases" have come from Chinese citizens, the first reaction to a situation of stress still seems to be a blanket ban on foreigners, which can only be seen as a political decision rather than a medical one.

All this makes entering China from abroad excruciatingly difficult. A few foreign citizens like me continue to live in China, but we do so in the knowledge that for the time being we cannot leave, or if we do we can forget about coming back. No one who resides in China would dream of leaving the country for business, let alone on holiday, given how hard it would be to return. There is talk of a travel bubble being set up with Thailand, but I'll believe it when I see it, especially since the interest seems to come mostly from the Thai side.

3)  You can't go anywhere without a green code 

There is one way, of course, in which life in China has indeed changed from when I left in January: you can't live without a green code proving you are not a potential carrier of Covid-19. Every province now has its own smartphone app that assigns you a "health code" with a specific colour based on your level of safety. A green code means you are safe, a yellow one means you should self-isolate, and a red code means that you should already have been dragged into quarantine. It has become hard to do much in China without using these apps. If I didn't have a green code, I would be unable to enter hospitals, banks, the office building where I work, most shopping malls and certain neighbourhoods of Beijing. It is hard to know when you might be required to scan a QR code and show your colour code. In Beijing you no longer need to do so to access public transport, but in some cities you still do.

The colour codes are assigned to you by apps hosted by the WeChat and Alipay platforms. In order to sign up, you have to provide your ID or passport number, some other basic info about yourself, and answer some questions about your health status (I have a strong suspicion that reporting symptoms of any kind, even a runny nose, will lead to a green code not being assigned to you). If you have travelled to other provinces within the last 14 days, you will be asked to select the provinces, the cities and even the precise districts that you visited. The app doesn't only make use of the information the users report themselves, however. As a Xinhua report from June states, "the health information reported by the users only constitutes a part of what is used to asses their health status (....) An individual's health information can come from different sources, and the data provided by district authorities, hospitals and their workplace can all be used for reference."

To be fair, over the last few months the requirement to show your health code has become rather less ubiquitous in Chinese cities, and most individual shops and restaurants no longer require it. All the same the system has become a basic feature of life in China, and its use can easily be scaled up again if there are new outbreaks. It is hard to imagine it being completely abandoned in the near future. While other countries in the region have established successful "track and trace" systems, I don't think there is anywhere else in the world where you are regularly asked to scan a QR code to enter public spaces. 

In China itself, the complete lack of privacy this system entails would have raised some serious eyebrows before the pandemic, but in the current environment most people haven't the slightest thing to say about it. Any steps the state takes to keep the pandemic at bay are accepted as necessary by the populace, which is only too grateful that their government is saving them from descending into the spiral of new lockdowns and overwhelmed hospitals which they see unfolding in much of the world. I myself have already got used to showing my green code all the time, and no longer give it much thought. Just like I no longer give much thought to passing through a metal detector every time I take the subway, having to show my passport just to buy a train or bus ticket out of town etc...

Having said all this, back in May there was a public outcry in Hangzhou after the local government proposed making the system pretty much permanent, assigning a colour to each citizen based on their medical records and lifestyle. This Black Mirror-esque proposal seems to have been dropped as a result of the barrage of negative comments it received on the internet, showing that there is still some concern left over people's privacy.

Another thing about the health code apps is that they have made it even less possible to live in China without using a smartphone, and without installing WeChat (or Alipay). It has also brought the "digital divide" between the elderly and the rest of the population into stark relief, with reports of retirees being unable to board buses in some cities because they could not show a health code. Ad hoc solutions will probably be found for the elderly, but the basic situation will not change: unless you are very old, not owning a smartphone and not downloading Tencent and Alibaba's main apps is just not possible in urban China today. Not doing so doesn't only make you an eccentric; it makes you a literal outcast, and someone who is getting in the way of containing the pandemic.