CHINESE ON THE ‘RUN’

Run is the hot buzzword as lockdowns spur urbanites, well-heeled to consider leaving

- Aw Cheng Wei

Freelance Web designer Timmy Zhou, 30, has spent his time under lockdown in Shanghai looking at community colleges in Canada.

He intends to start school in either Toronto or Vancouver next year as a side door out of China, before he decides whether to continue his education at a state college or start working in Canada, where he hopes to take up citizenship eventually.

“The lockdown in Shanghai has given me the time and conviction to take steps towards emigrating,” the arts school graduate from Hefei city in eastern China said.

The Chinese government’s whack-a-mole approach to the pandemic – replete with lockdowns, frequent testing and strict limits on overseas travel – is pushing young urbanites and the well-heeled to consider life elsewhere.

China is the world’s only major economy that is sticking to a zeroCovid-19 approach to fighting the pandemic.

A study by Fudan University in Shanghai earlier this month cited the potential loss of 1.55 million lives if China were to abandon its current measures.

Increasing the vaccination rate, ensuring access to antiviral therapies and maintaining measures like social distancing can prevent the country’s healthcare system from being overwhelmed and reduce the number of deaths, researchers said.

China’s overall vaccination rate is nearly 88 per cent.

Shanghai, China’s financial capital with 25 million residents, has been under lockdown for more than six weeks, although it is carefully coming out of isolation.

The authorities have also tightened restrictions in Beijing recently by prohibiting dining at restaurants, suspending public transport services and insisting on daily testing to stop the highly infectious Omicron variant from spreading.