Beijing, the capital, will become the first metropolis in China to introduce mandatory vaccinations for visitors to gyms, swimming pools, cinemas, museums, Internet cafes, theaters and "other places where large numbers of people gather" next week.

So far, a person's vaccination status has hardly played a role in the corona measures in China.

The Beijing initiative is all the more symbolic.

Foreign experts have long complained that the country is not pushing ahead with its vaccination campaign with the necessary urgency.

Ironically, among older people, the proportion of those who have been vaccinated three times is comparatively low.

Almost a sixth of those over the age of 60 had not yet been vaccinated in May.

Chinese epidemiologists also know that this is a problem.

Friederike Böge

Political correspondent for China, North Korea and Mongolia.

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The health expert Yanzhong Huang from the Council on Foreign Relations in New York therefore sees the Beijing vaccination card as a "potentially important step" that could signal a cautious "movement away from the zero-Covid policy".

The even more easily transmissible omicron subvariant BA.5.2, which has now also reached China, makes it "increasingly impossible to contain the spread of the virus," Huang told the FAZ were not given priority.

The most important success parameter of their work was not the protection of vulnerable groups, but low infection rates and the rapid identification of each new cluster.

"The sole focus on zero-Covid is detrimental to the vaccination campaign," says Huang.

Most recently, the pace of vaccination had even slowed because a significant proportion of medical workers were busy with bulk PCR tests rolled out nationwide in response to the lockdown in Shanghai.

"You can't dictate anything to nature"

In order to speed up the vaccination campaign, it would probably be necessary to make the prevention of serious illnesses and deaths the yardstick of the strategy instead of zero infections.

Such an about-face would entail political risks for the Chinese leadership, especially before the important party congress in autumn.

The zero-Covid strategy has long been marketed as a personal success story by head of state and party leader Xi Jinping and ideologically inflated as alleged proof of the superiority of the Chinese system.

The leadership will want to avoid any appearance that they have been pursuing the wrong strategy for too long or that they are now learning lessons from Western countries' experiences.

"I think they may have initially bet on staying the course, at least until the convention.

From the point of view of experts, the Beijing vaccination card may be overdue.

The public reacted surprisingly critically on Thursday, at least on the Internet.

Many see the fact that only those who have been vaccinated should have access to certain places as compulsory vaccination through the back door.

The national health authority has repeatedly emphasized that vaccination is voluntary, and last year even reprimanded local governments for wanting to introduce a vaccination certificate.

Other Beijingers consider it irresponsible to urge older people with chronic diseases to be vaccinated.

Because of such beliefs, which are widespread, the elderly in China were initially even excluded from the vaccination campaign.

Still others criticize the policy as half-hearted and contradictory,