BRUSSELS: China’s President Xi Jinping suggested in talks with EU chief Charles Michel that the spread of the less lethal Omicron strain of Covid-19 may allow Beijing to ease lockdown rules, European officials said on Friday.

Michel met the Chinese leader in Beijing on Thursday.

According to an account of the meeting from a senior European official, Xi told Michel that Chinese “people were frustrated” after three years of the coronavirus epidemic.

Anger and frustration with China’s hardline pandemic response spilled onto the streets last weekend in widespread demonstrations not seen in decades, but a number of cities have now begun loosening the most onerous rules such as daily mass testing.

According to the European officials, Michel suggested to Xi that China follow the example of Europe and favour vaccination drives rather than lockdowns to control the spread of the disease.

Xi, they said, told Michel that "now Covid in China is mainly Omicron, and Delta was much more lethal before and Omicron less lethal, which opens the way for more openness of the restrictions than what we have already seen in some regions”.

Michel, the president of the European Council, asked Xi about the restrictions and the protests and Xi complained “that after three years of Covid that he had an issue because people were frustrated”.

China’s Covid policies have stifled everything from domestic consumption, to factory output and global supply chains, and have inflicted severe mental stress on hundreds of millions of people.

Anger over the world’s toughest curbs fuelled dozens of protests in more than 20 cities in recent days in a show of civil disobedience unprecedented in mainland China since President Xi Jinping took power in 2012.

Less than 24 hours after people clashed with white hazmat-suited riot police in Guangzhou on Tuesday, a sprawling manufacturing hub just north of Hong Kong, the city lifted lockdowns in at least seven of its districts.

Published in Dawn, December 3rd, 2022