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‘Illicit’ local Covid controls fuelling backlash in China, says government legal adviser

  • Peking University law professor Jiang Mingan criticises lower level authorities for taking action that generates public ‘resentment or even resistance’
  • The central government has accelerated the easing of controls after rare protests across several major cities a couple of weeks ago

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Shoppers in a Beijing shopping mall after the capital started to ease its restrictions. Photo: AP
A legal adviser to China’s top lawmaking body has accused lower level governments of fuelling the backlash against the country’s strict Covid controls by breaching the law while implementing Beijing’s policies.
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The comments by Jiang Mingan, a law professor at Peking University who advises the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, are a rare example of a government adviser accusing lower level governments of breaking the law when implementing zero-Covid policies.

“An important reason why some local preventive and control measures are resented or even resisted by the public is that they violate the provisions of laws and regulations on the conditions, subjects, authority and implementation procedures for taking corresponding Covid preventive and control measures,” Jiang wrote in an article published on WeChat December 2.

This week the country moved to speed up the easing of restrictions following a series of protests last month in major cities around the country prompted by a deadly fire in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, that killed 10 people. The city authorities have denied that Covid restrictions hampered rescue efforts.

For the past three years, China has been using mass testing, lockdowns and closures of public areas to contain the virus despite the growing anger and frustration at the impact of prolonged controls.

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Some prominent intellectuals, including legal scholars, have questioned the legal basis for some of the measures adopted, such as forcing residents who tested negative into quarantine or entering homes to disinfect them after just a single or handful of cases in a residential blocks.
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