Covid-19

The global pandemic in 2020.

Action on Covid-19

Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Sweden, the four countries with relatively reliable statistics and recent relatively high Covid rates, all now report downturns. So does China, but the danger of a fierce new variant emerging this winter remains. We call for: • a sustained public-health testing-and-surveillance system • good sick pay for all • restore NHS funding and repeal privatisation • requisition private hospitals to augment NHS resources • bringing social care into the public sector with NHS-level pay and conditions for staff • specialist public clinics for post-Covid conditions, more...

More crises to come in China

There should be little doubt amongst Chinese citizens that protesters won an important battle against Xi Jinping’s government, a regime that seemed all powerful. Xi had to change tack drafted after pledging that his government is “unwavering” in its commitment to dynamic Zero-Covid. A combination of drastic economic downturn and widespread protests, as Omicron eluded every isolation attempt, was more than the Chinese Communist Party could cope with. So Xi went for a sudden and reckless dismantling of curbs. China’s National Health Commission has now announced (Thursday 19 January) that...

Action on Covid-19

Epidemic control workers in Beijing Several reports say that the Covid spike in China, following the scrapping of curbs there, has been ultra-fast and may even have passed its peak of infections already. We will see. The danger of a fierce new variant arising in that spike and spreading world-wide is not yet gone. We call for: • a sustained public-health testing-and-surveillance system • good sick pay for all • restore NHS funding and repeal privatisation • requisition private hospitals to augment NHS resources • bring social care into the public sector with NHS-level pay and conditions for...

Covid surge and worker revolt in China

Covid is spreading very rapidly in China, creating widespread alarm and anger against the government. On 7 January, workers in a medical equipment factory in Chongqing, Southwest China rebelled against recruitment agencies and factory management after workers were laid off (on some reports, up to 10,000). Workers clashed with armed police who came to suppress the revolt. Footage posted on Chinese social media shows workers beating up agency recruiters, destroying hoards of medical stock, burning cars, and throwing objects at the police. The company, Zybio Inc., produces PCR testing kits...

Action on Covid-19

Many are warning that China’s unavoidable easing of Covid curbs may bring a big death toll, because of China’s poor vaccination level, poor health care, and low levels of immunity from previous infection. The curb-exit may in fact turn out less dramatic because China has grossly under-reported previous levels of infection, Covid-deaths (and deaths from other ailments speeded by lockdowns). We don’t know. In Britain, Covid has started its expected winter resurgence since mid-November, as yet more mildly than France, but with the NHS already overwhelmed. We need: • to restore NHS funding and...

Morning Star on China protests

In the wake of ten deaths in a fire in Xinjiang province — deaths, it is widely believed, that could have been avoided if Covid ultra-lockdown had not prevented escape or rescue — Chinese people took to the streets across the country, especially over the weekend of 26-27 November. Some protesters borrowed the words of a lone man who hung a banner over a bridge in Beijing just before the Chinese Communist Party’s recent congress: “Democracy not dictators; citizens not slaves”. Many held up blank pieces of paper — a wordless, silent protest. Most media gave these events large and rapid coverage...

Return to meeting in person

Since lockdown in 2020, nearly all my regular labour movement meetings have stayed as wholly online affairs: Labour Party meetings, union branch meetings, union left caucuses, even many Workers’ Liberty meetings. Finally, after many false starts and technological troubles, my Labour Party has moved to hybrid meetings. I have focused on getting there in person. It has been a revelation about what we had been missing by not meeting in person. The last three years have seen a long series of defeats for the left in the Labour Party, and locally we have had dwindling attendance of zoom meetings...

Action on Covid-19

France has seen an upturn in Covid cases and hospitalisations since mid-November, but low response to a booster jab drive (the government reckons only 21% of over-80s and 37% of those aged 60-79 are “adequately protected” by recent vaccination or mild infection). Covid death counts there remain low so far, and in Britain and many other countries as much concern focuses on Strep A, scarlet fever, flu, RSV, etc., infectious diseases especially hitting young children for which immunity may have declined due to lockdowns. But an ill-managed exit from ultra-lockdowns in China could create a huge...

China erupts: the workers are key

See our leaflet for 10 December Foxconn / China democracy solidarity protests here . The last four weeks have seen the biggest working-class revolt in China in 33 years. There have been illegal street protests and occasionally pitched battles with security police in major cities — Nanjing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Beijing, Wuhan, etc. Shaken by the street protests from Ürümqi, capital of Xinjiang, in the west to Shanghai in the east, the Chinese government announced a climbdown, lifting the ultra-lockdowns under which workers were locked in their apartments or, as in the huge Foxconn factory...

China rebels for democracy

Street protests across China followed the death of ten people in a fire in a block of flats in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang (East Turkestan, the Uyghur region) on 24 November. Protests in Urumqi itself, and in many other cities across China in the following few days, said that the ten had died because Covid curbs stopped them fleeing the fire. As of 29 November, the protests had ebbed for the time being, but they represent a new peak of an agitation building up for months. On 13 October, just before the ceremonial Congress of China’s ruling party which would reaffirm the cult and the authority...

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