What the great reopening means for China – and the world

WHEN its borders open on Jan 8, China will have spent 1,016 days closed to the outside world. The country’s zero-Covid policy has been a social and economic experiment without precedent: a vast public health campaign that mostly kept the disease at bay; Xi Jinping’s pride and joy; and, by the end, a waking nightmare for many of China’s 1.4 billion people.

Armies in white hazmat suits have been deployed to collect tens of billions of throat and nasal swabs. Millions were quarantined or hauled off to fever camps, often arbitrarily. Fear of isolation sent people fleeing from offices and factories where cases were found. Amateur videos captured residents leaping to their deaths from apartment blocks after weeks of seclusion.

In major cities, daily life stood still for months on end. A cosmopolitan class of young, wealthy Chinese was forced to come to grips with a life without international travel. Foreign entrepreneurs and executives were barred from returning to their homes and businesses in the country.