What does China’s unwinding of Zero Covid mean for Ireland?

“The upside is it will help with supply chains [and will] help generally with the prosperity of the world. The downside is China will be consuming more energy at a time when there’s already a crunch on energy and prices are high.”

Our China Correspondent, Denis Staunton, reports from Beijing where just over a month ago protesters gathered in a rare show of defiance against the Chinese Communist Party.

Similar demonstrations were held in other parts of the country in opposition to China’s Zero Covid policy. The restrictive measures, mass testing and snap lockdowns had become too much for people to bear.

It led to a scrapping of the policy in December and a wave of cases in a country where hitherto “almost no-one knew anyone who’d ever been infected” with the virus.

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Yesterday, China formally unwound the requirement for inbound travellers to quarantine. It has struck a defiant tone with the European Union after several countries reintroduced pre-flight Covid 19 tests for passengers arriving from China.

The abrupt reopening will likely be a major boost to the world economy and is a welcome relief for foreigners living there, who have felt unable to leave for the past three years.

We get the latest from Denis in this episode presented by Bernice Harrison.

Produced by Declan Conlon and Trish Laverty.