• =?UTF-8?Q?=e2=80=98Zero_covid=e2=80=99_has_many_in_China_dreaming_o?= =

    From Michael Ejercito@21:1/5 to All on Thu Jun 16 21:37:50 2022
    XPost: alt.bible.prophecy, soc.culture.china, soc.culture.israel

    https://archive.ph/cD1wF


    ‘Zero covid’ has many in China dreaming of leaving
    By Lily Kuo and Lyric Li
    June 15, 2022 at 2:55 a.m. EDT

    Zhu Aitao visits her alma mater, Leeds University, in England in 2019 on
    her last international trip before the pandemic. (Zhu Aitao)

    Listen
    9 min

    Comment
    80

    Gift Article

    Share
    By most accounts, Zhu Aitao has it all. Now she is ready to leave it all behind.
    The 35-year-old, originally from China’s Shandong province, lives in the richest district of Beijing with her husband — her high school
    sweetheart — and their two young children. They own their home and two
    cars, a BMW and a Lexus. They both have stable jobs: Zhu manages public relations at a multinational auto company, while her husband writes for
    a government-owned journal.
    Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for the latest updates on Russia's war in Ukraine.
    Sick of their lives being dictated by pandemic measures — the frequent
    and sudden lockdowns, never-ending rounds of mass testing and constant uncertainty — Zhu hopes to move her family to Thailand as soon as
    possible and eventually immigrate to Europe or the United States.
    “I feel like I’m having an emotional breakdown,” she said. “I feel powerless. It’s like an overbearing father telling you that this is all
    for your own sake. You just need to listen. Don’t ask questions.”
    Zhu is one of a growing number of Chinese urban professionals
    subscribing to a new school of thought known as runxue, the study of how
    to “run” away from their home country. For many like Zhu, it is not just about China’s severe “zero covid” policy, but what the future looks like in a society where politics — upholding the top leader’s policies no
    matter the cost — trumps science and the well-being of residents whose day-to-day lives are subject to ever more state interference.
    [Xi’s strict covid policies prompt rumblings of discontent in China] “It’s migration driven by a sense of disillusion,” said Xiang Biao, a director at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany focusing on migration. “People are not running away from the virus.
    People are running away from such top-down measures and disregard of individuals’ feelings and dignity.”
    Inquiries into emigrating have surged since chaotic lockdown measures
    were imposed in April on China’s most populous city, Shanghai, where residents struggled to feed themselves and watched family members die
    after being unable to get medical attention for non-covid emergencies.
    The term runxue, or “the science of running,” soon gained momentum
    online among disaffected residents in Shanghai and dozens of other
    Chinese cities under some form of lockdown.
    On April 3, when a senior Chinese official visited Shanghai and ordered “unswerving” adherence to zero covid, searches for “emigration” on the social media platform WeChat surged more than 400 percent from a day
    earlier and again by almost 500 percent on May 17 as restrictions
    continued. Searches for requirements for immigrating to Canada and
    Malaysia, as well as the question “good immigration destinations,” increased twentyfold between the end of March and early April, according
    to Baidu data.
    Watching from afar, Luna Liu, a PhD candidate in England at the
    University of London who is originally from Tianjin, posted on the forum
    Douban that she would give free advice to anyone hoping to move to
    Britain. She now has appointments booked until November, with a
    half-dozen people still on a waiting list.
    “I can feel that many of those I spoke to had illusions about the system
    at home. After the lockdown of Shanghai, those illusions were shattered.
    They realized that if they want to live freely, they have to get out of there,” Liu said.
    [Shanghai’s covid siege: Food shortages, talking robots, starving animals] While runxue has not triggered a mass migration, it is the latest
    example of deeper pessimism in China amid slowing growth, historic
    levels of youth unemployment, an increasingly prohibitive political
    environment and uncertainty over China’s openness as the country turns increasingly inward.
    A joke often seen online is that stressed-out urbanites have three
    options. They can continue to struggle in the rat race of Chinese
    society, making little progress in an approach known as neijuan, or “involution,” the process of turning inward in a self-defeating
    competition with others. Others may choose to opt out of a life of
    striving and instead tangping, or “lie flat.” Now, those with means can choose to emigrate, or “run.”
    [Young Chinese take a stand against pressures of modern life — by lying
    down]
    “This is definitely not a normal phenomenon, nor is it something that
    would be widely talked about in a healthy society,” said Li Nuo, 45,
    from Hebei province, who obtained permanent residency in Japan last year
    and now runs an e-commerce company in Osaka. Recently, he has been
    helping friends and family trying to leave China.
    “If China is really as powerful and great as it claims, why are so many people willing to send themselves into exile, and why do so many young
    people have no sense of security? What this says is that this society is sick,” he said.

    Li Nuo and his cat, Nana, walk along the southern Osaka Bay in Japan.
    (Li Nuo)
    Foreign passports and green cards have long been the privilege of
    China’s wealthiest families, often seeking better educational
    opportunities for their children. Now, more middle-class families and
    young people are also looking for a way out.
    Joy Zhou, 23, who works at a nongovernmental organization in Beijing,
    plans to move to Canada in the next year or two to study and hopes to
    establish permanent residency there. Zhou started thinking about moving
    abroad last year to experience living in a new cultural environment.
    Now, she feels a sense of urgency.
    “Leaving is not just about the pandemic. I don’t identify with about 80 percent of mainstream social values here,” she said, noting her concern
    about women’s rights, the treatment of workers and increasingly limited freedom of speech in China. “This system is without a doubt backwards.
    People seem to have learned to cope with living in an unreasonable
    system, but will our lives ever become better?”
    While many talk about leaving, few will actually make the leap,
    according to Julia Jing, a consultant at Pacific Overseas Group in
    Beijing, which offers immigration advice. She said the company received
    more inquires in the first four months of this year than in the whole of
    2021.
    Jing said that while there are more overseas opportunities for Chinese
    tech entrepreneurs and specialists at a time when domestic firms are
    laying off workers, residents also have to consider things like care for elderly parents, language barriers or the possibility that border
    controls will prevent them from returning home indefinitely.
    Still, internet users, both older and younger, post extensive and
    detailed articles about the logistics and technicalities of emigrating
    despite the fact that they are unlikely to act on such advice.
    Discussing the possibility of emigrating becomes both a form of fantasy
    and a way to vent.
    “People feel that runxue is a way for them not just to imagine a
    different life. It’s a way to imagine their autonomy,” said Xiang, of
    the Max Planck Institute. “It’s a way to express anger, powerlessness
    and disillusion.”
    [Stranded in their own homes: Portraits of Shanghai’s lockdown]
    Official attitudes toward emigration, once seen as a betrayal of
    socialist ideology during the early years of the People’s Republic of
    China, have loosened over the years. Waves of emigration include
    students, contract laborers, activists and other migrants in the 1980s
    and 1990s. Authorities further opened up applications from regular
    citizens for passports, which for years were limited to officials, and
    by mid-2019, about 13 percent of the mainland population had them,
    according to government data.
    Now, as authorities work to attract talent and prevent a brain drain in
    the face of a shrinking and aging population, some worry that emigration
    will once again become politicized. Over the past two years, authorities
    have issued fewer passports and restricted outbound travel in the name
    of covid measures.

    Joy Zhou sits on a cliff during a summer trip in 2018 to Yunnan, China.
    (Joy Zhou)
    Last year, China issued 630,000 passports, compared with an average of
    10.8 million annually from 2002 to 2017. In May, the National
    Immigration Administration said it would continue to “strictly restrict
    the nonessential departures” of Chinese citizens.
    On social media, internet users have posted accounts of their passports
    being taken by employers or foreign residency cards and passports
    getting cut up by border officials. The immigration authority in May
    denied that passports had been halted or that residency certificates had
    been invalidated.
    [China shuts down talk of covid hardship; users strike back]
    While censors do not appear to be heavily moderating the online
    discussion of runxue, authorities are likely to be concerned about an
    ideology that promotes abandoning the country. On WeChat, some articles
    on runxue were blocked for “violating relevant laws.” Internet users on GitHub said some Weibo and WeChat accounts posting immigration tips had
    been shuttered. On the search engine Baidu, data for search volume on
    terms related to emigration is no longer available to the public.
    “It’s not only what people do that shapes society. It’s also where
    people imagine their future or a good life to be. Runxue says that
    people imagine the good life to be somewhere else, and that says a lot
    about Chinese society today,” said Heidi Ostbo Haugen, a professor of
    China studies at the University of Oslo.
    “They are always ready to leave, and that does something to how you live
    your life here and now,” she said.
    For Zhu, the public relations manager in Beijing, the biggest obstacle
    to leaving is her husband, a traditional man for whom moving to Beijing
    from their hometown in Shandong was already a big request. Recently, she nervously broached the subject of moving with him. He did not
    immediately say no.
    In the meantime, she tries to stay busy to avoid focusing on things like
    her children spending their childhood under pandemic restrictions,
    something that causes her insomnia.
    “I just try to fill my work and life as much as possible. While I don’t like the current policy, who knows if it will get worse tomorrow?”
    Kuo reported from Taipei and Li from Seoul.

    --
    This email has been checked for viruses by AVG.
    https://www.avg.com

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From HeartDoc Andrew@21:1/5 to Michael Ejercito on Fri Jun 17 00:48:29 2022
    XPost: alt.bible.prophecy, soc.culture.china, soc.culture.israel
    XPost: talk.politics.guns

    Michael Ejercito wrote:

    https://archive.ph/cD1wF


    Zero covid has many in China dreaming of leaving
    By Lily Kuo and Lyric Li
    June 15, 2022 at 2:55 a.m. EDT

    Zhu Aitao visits her alma mater, Leeds University, in England in 2019 on
    her last international trip before the pandemic. (Zhu Aitao)

    Listen
    9 min

    Comment
    80

    Gift Article

    Share
    By most accounts, Zhu Aitao has it all. Now she is ready to leave it all >behind.
    The 35-year-old, originally from Chinas Shandong province, lives in the >richest district of Beijing with her husband her high school
    sweetheart and their two young children. They own their home and two
    cars, a BMW and a Lexus. They both have stable jobs: Zhu manages public >relations at a multinational auto company, while her husband writes for
    a government-owned journal.
    Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for the latest updates on >Russia's war in Ukraine.
    Sick of their lives being dictated by pandemic measures the frequent
    and sudden lockdowns, never-ending rounds of mass testing and constant >uncertainty Zhu hopes to move her family to Thailand as soon as
    possible and eventually immigrate to Europe or the United States.
    I feel like Im having an emotional breakdown, she said. I feel
    powerless. Its like an overbearing father telling you that this is all
    for your own sake. You just need to listen. Dont ask questions.
    Zhu is one of a growing number of Chinese urban professionals
    subscribing to a new school of thought known as runxue, the study of how
    to run away from their home country. For many like Zhu, it is not just >about Chinas severe zero covid policy, but what the future looks like
    in a society where politics upholding the top leaders policies no
    matter the cost trumps science and the well-being of residents whose >day-to-day lives are subject to ever more state interference.
    [Xis strict covid policies prompt rumblings of discontent in China]
    Its migration driven by a sense of disillusion, said Xiang Biao, a >director at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany >focusing on migration. People are not running away from the virus.
    People are running away from such top-down measures and disregard of >individuals feelings and dignity.
    Inquiries into emigrating have surged since chaotic lockdown measures
    were imposed in April on Chinas most populous city, Shanghai, where >residents struggled to feed themselves and watched family members die
    after being unable to get medical attention for non-covid emergencies.
    The term runxue, or the science of running, soon gained momentum
    online among disaffected residents in Shanghai and dozens of other
    Chinese cities under some form of lockdown.
    On April 3, when a senior Chinese official visited Shanghai and ordered >unswerving adherence to zero covid, searches for emigration on the
    social media platform WeChat surged more than 400 percent from a day
    earlier and again by almost 500 percent on May 17 as restrictions
    continued. Searches for requirements for immigrating to Canada and
    Malaysia, as well as the question good immigration destinations,
    increased twentyfold between the end of March and early April, according
    to Baidu data.
    Watching from afar, Luna Liu, a PhD candidate in England at the
    University of London who is originally from Tianjin, posted on the forum >Douban that she would give free advice to anyone hoping to move to
    Britain. She now has appointments booked until November, with a
    half-dozen people still on a waiting list.
    I can feel that many of those I spoke to had illusions about the system
    at home. After the lockdown of Shanghai, those illusions were shattered.
    They realized that if they want to live freely, they have to get out of >there, Liu said.
    [Shanghais covid siege: Food shortages, talking robots, starving animals] >While runxue has not triggered a mass migration, it is the latest
    example of deeper pessimism in China amid slowing growth, historic
    levels of youth unemployment, an increasingly prohibitive political >environment and uncertainty over Chinas openness as the country turns >increasingly inward.
    A joke often seen online is that stressed-out urbanites have three
    options. They can continue to struggle in the rat race of Chinese
    society, making little progress in an approach known as neijuan, or >involution, the process of turning inward in a self-defeating
    competition with others. Others may choose to opt out of a life of
    striving and instead tangping, or lie flat. Now, those with means can >choose to emigrate, or run.
    [Young Chinese take a stand against pressures of modern life by lying
    down]
    This is definitely not a normal phenomenon, nor is it something that
    would be widely talked about in a healthy society, said Li Nuo, 45,
    from Hebei province, who obtained permanent residency in Japan last year
    and now runs an e-commerce company in Osaka. Recently, he has been
    helping friends and family trying to leave China.
    If China is really as powerful and great as it claims, why are so many >people willing to send themselves into exile, and why do so many young
    people have no sense of security? What this says is that this society is >sick, he said.

    Li Nuo and his cat, Nana, walk along the southern Osaka Bay in Japan.
    (Li Nuo)
    Foreign passports and green cards have long been the privilege of
    Chinas wealthiest families, often seeking better educational
    opportunities for their children. Now, more middle-class families and
    young people are also looking for a way out.
    Joy Zhou, 23, who works at a nongovernmental organization in Beijing,
    plans to move to Canada in the next year or two to study and hopes to >establish permanent residency there. Zhou started thinking about moving >abroad last year to experience living in a new cultural environment.
    Now, she feels a sense of urgency.
    Leaving is not just about the pandemic. I dont identify with about 80 >percent of mainstream social values here, she said, noting her concern
    about womens rights, the treatment of workers and increasingly limited >freedom of speech in China. This system is without a doubt backwards.
    People seem to have learned to cope with living in an unreasonable
    system, but will our lives ever become better?
    While many talk about leaving, few will actually make the leap,
    according to Julia Jing, a consultant at Pacific Overseas Group in
    Beijing, which offers immigration advice. She said the company received
    more inquires in the first four months of this year than in the whole of >2021.
    Jing said that while there are more overseas opportunities for Chinese
    tech entrepreneurs and specialists at a time when domestic firms are
    laying off workers, residents also have to consider things like care for >elderly parents, language barriers or the possibility that border
    controls will prevent them from returning home indefinitely.
    Still, internet users, both older and younger, post extensive and
    detailed articles about the logistics and technicalities of emigrating >despite the fact that they are unlikely to act on such advice.
    Discussing the possibility of emigrating becomes both a form of fantasy
    and a way to vent.
    People feel that runxue is a way for them not just to imagine a
    different life. Its a way to imagine their autonomy, said Xiang, of
    the Max Planck Institute. Its a way to express anger, powerlessness
    and disillusion.
    [Stranded in their own homes: Portraits of Shanghais lockdown]
    Official attitudes toward emigration, once seen as a betrayal of
    socialist ideology during the early years of the Peoples Republic of
    China, have loosened over the years. Waves of emigration include
    students, contract laborers, activists and other migrants in the 1980s
    and 1990s. Authorities further opened up applications from regular
    citizens for passports, which for years were limited to officials, and
    by mid-2019, about 13 percent of the mainland population had them,
    according to government data.
    Now, as authorities work to attract talent and prevent a brain drain in
    the face of a shrinking and aging population, some worry that emigration
    will once again become politicized. Over the past two years, authorities
    have issued fewer passports and restricted outbound travel in the name
    of covid measures.

    Joy Zhou sits on a cliff during a summer trip in 2018 to Yunnan, China.
    (Joy Zhou)
    Last year, China issued 630,000 passports, compared with an average of
    10.8 million annually from 2002 to 2017. In May, the National
    Immigration Administration said it would continue to strictly restrict
    the nonessential departures of Chinese citizens.
    On social media, internet users have posted accounts of their passports
    being taken by employers or foreign residency cards and passports
    getting cut up by border officials. The immigration authority in May
    denied that passports had been halted or that residency certificates had
    been invalidated.
    [China shuts down talk of covid hardship; users strike back]
    While censors do not appear to be heavily moderating the online
    discussion of runxue, authorities are likely to be concerned about an >ideology that promotes abandoning the country. On WeChat, some articles
    on runxue were blocked for violating relevant laws. Internet users on >GitHub said some Weibo and WeChat accounts posting immigration tips had
    been shuttered. On the search engine Baidu, data for search volume on
    terms related to emigration is no longer available to the public.
    Its not only what people do that shapes society. Its also where
    people imagine their future or a good life to be. Runxue says that
    people imagine the good life to be somewhere else, and that says a lot
    about Chinese society today, said Heidi Ostbo Haugen, a professor of
    China studies at the University of Oslo.
    They are always ready to leave, and that does something to how you live
    your life here and now, she said.
    For Zhu, the public relations manager in Beijing, the biggest obstacle
    to leaving is her husband, a traditional man for whom moving to Beijing
    from their hometown in Shandong was already a big request. Recently, she >nervously broached the subject of moving with him. He did not
    immediately say no.
    In the meantime, she tries to stay busy to avoid focusing on things like
    her children spending their childhood under pandemic restrictions,
    something that causes her insomnia.
    I just try to fill my work and life as much as possible. While I dont
    like the current policy, who knows if it will get worse tomorrow?


    The only *healthy* way to stop the pandemic, thereby saving lives, in
    China & elsewhere is by rapidly ( http://bit.ly/RapidTestCOVID-19 )
    finding out at any given moment, including even while on-line, who
    among us are unwittingly contagious (i.e pre-symptomatic or
    asymptomatic) in order to http://tinyurl.com/ConvinceItForward (John
    15:12) for them to call their doctor and self-quarantine per their
    doctor in hopes of stopping this pandemic. Thus, we're hoping for the
    best while preparing for the worse-case scenario of the Alpha lineage
    mutations and others like the Omicron, Gamma, Beta, Epsilon, Iota,
    Lambda, Mu & Delta lineage mutations combining via
    slip-RNA-replication to form hybrids like
    http://tinyurl.com/Deltamicron that may render current COVID vaccines/monoclonals/medicines/pills no longer effective.

    Indeed, I am wonderfully hungry ( http://tinyurl.com/RapidOmicronTest
    ) and hope you, Michael, also have a healthy appetite too.

    So how are you ?









    ...because we mindfully choose to openly care with our heart,

    HeartDoc Andrew <><
    --
    Andrew B. Chung, MD/PhD
    Cardiologist with an http://bit.ly/EternalMedicalLicense
    2024 & upwards non-partisan candidate for U.S. President: http://WonderfullyHungry.org
    and author of the 2PD-OMER Approach:
    http://bit.ly/HeartDocAndrewCare
    which is the only **healthy** cure for the U.S. healthcare crisis

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Michael Ejercito@21:1/5 to HeartDoc Andrew on Thu Jun 16 22:09:36 2022
    XPost: alt.bible.prophecy, soc.culture.china, soc.culture.israel
    XPost: talk.politics.guns

    HeartDoc Andrew wrote:
    Michael Ejercito wrote:

    https://archive.ph/cD1wF


    ‘Zero covid’ has many in China dreaming of leaving
    By Lily Kuo and Lyric Li
    June 15, 2022 at 2:55 a.m. EDT

    Zhu Aitao visits her alma mater, Leeds University, in England in 2019 on
    her last international trip before the pandemic. (Zhu Aitao)

    Listen
    9 min

    Comment
    80

    Gift Article

    Share
    By most accounts, Zhu Aitao has it all. Now she is ready to leave it all
    behind.
    The 35-year-old, originally from China’s Shandong province, lives in the >> richest district of Beijing with her husband — her high school
    sweetheart — and their two young children. They own their home and two
    cars, a BMW and a Lexus. They both have stable jobs: Zhu manages public
    relations at a multinational auto company, while her husband writes for
    a government-owned journal.
    Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for the latest updates on
    Russia's war in Ukraine.
    Sick of their lives being dictated by pandemic measures — the frequent
    and sudden lockdowns, never-ending rounds of mass testing and constant
    uncertainty — Zhu hopes to move her family to Thailand as soon as
    possible and eventually immigrate to Europe or the United States.
    “I feel like I’m having an emotional breakdown,” she said. “I feel >> powerless. It’s like an overbearing father telling you that this is all
    for your own sake. You just need to listen. Don’t ask questions.”
    Zhu is one of a growing number of Chinese urban professionals
    subscribing to a new school of thought known as runxue, the study of how
    to “run” away from their home country. For many like Zhu, it is not just >> about China’s severe “zero covid” policy, but what the future looks like
    in a society where politics — upholding the top leader’s policies no
    matter the cost — trumps science and the well-being of residents whose
    day-to-day lives are subject to ever more state interference.
    [Xi’s strict covid policies prompt rumblings of discontent in China]
    “It’s migration driven by a sense of disillusion,” said Xiang Biao, a >> director at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany
    focusing on migration. “People are not running away from the virus.
    People are running away from such top-down measures and disregard of
    individuals’ feelings and dignity.”
    Inquiries into emigrating have surged since chaotic lockdown measures
    were imposed in April on China’s most populous city, Shanghai, where
    residents struggled to feed themselves and watched family members die
    after being unable to get medical attention for non-covid emergencies.
    The term runxue, or “the science of running,” soon gained momentum
    online among disaffected residents in Shanghai and dozens of other
    Chinese cities under some form of lockdown.
    On April 3, when a senior Chinese official visited Shanghai and ordered
    “unswerving” adherence to zero covid, searches for “emigration” on the
    social media platform WeChat surged more than 400 percent from a day
    earlier and again by almost 500 percent on May 17 as restrictions
    continued. Searches for requirements for immigrating to Canada and
    Malaysia, as well as the question “good immigration destinations,”
    increased twentyfold between the end of March and early April, according
    to Baidu data.
    Watching from afar, Luna Liu, a PhD candidate in England at the
    University of London who is originally from Tianjin, posted on the forum
    Douban that she would give free advice to anyone hoping to move to
    Britain. She now has appointments booked until November, with a
    half-dozen people still on a waiting list.
    “I can feel that many of those I spoke to had illusions about the system >> at home. After the lockdown of Shanghai, those illusions were shattered.
    They realized that if they want to live freely, they have to get out of
    there,” Liu said.
    [Shanghai’s covid siege: Food shortages, talking robots, starving animals] >> While runxue has not triggered a mass migration, it is the latest
    example of deeper pessimism in China amid slowing growth, historic
    levels of youth unemployment, an increasingly prohibitive political
    environment and uncertainty over China’s openness as the country turns
    increasingly inward.
    A joke often seen online is that stressed-out urbanites have three
    options. They can continue to struggle in the rat race of Chinese
    society, making little progress in an approach known as neijuan, or
    “involution,” the process of turning inward in a self-defeating
    competition with others. Others may choose to opt out of a life of
    striving and instead tangping, or “lie flat.” Now, those with means can >> choose to emigrate, or “run.”
    [Young Chinese take a stand against pressures of modern life — by lying
    down]
    “This is definitely not a normal phenomenon, nor is it something that
    would be widely talked about in a healthy society,” said Li Nuo, 45, >>from Hebei province, who obtained permanent residency in Japan last year
    and now runs an e-commerce company in Osaka. Recently, he has been
    helping friends and family trying to leave China.
    “If China is really as powerful and great as it claims, why are so many
    people willing to send themselves into exile, and why do so many young
    people have no sense of security? What this says is that this society is
    sick,” he said.

    Li Nuo and his cat, Nana, walk along the southern Osaka Bay in Japan.
    (Li Nuo)
    Foreign passports and green cards have long been the privilege of
    China’s wealthiest families, often seeking better educational
    opportunities for their children. Now, more middle-class families and
    young people are also looking for a way out.
    Joy Zhou, 23, who works at a nongovernmental organization in Beijing,
    plans to move to Canada in the next year or two to study and hopes to
    establish permanent residency there. Zhou started thinking about moving
    abroad last year to experience living in a new cultural environment.
    Now, she feels a sense of urgency.
    “Leaving is not just about the pandemic. I don’t identify with about 80 >> percent of mainstream social values here,” she said, noting her concern
    about women’s rights, the treatment of workers and increasingly limited
    freedom of speech in China. “This system is without a doubt backwards.
    People seem to have learned to cope with living in an unreasonable
    system, but will our lives ever become better?”
    While many talk about leaving, few will actually make the leap,
    according to Julia Jing, a consultant at Pacific Overseas Group in
    Beijing, which offers immigration advice. She said the company received
    more inquires in the first four months of this year than in the whole of
    2021.
    Jing said that while there are more overseas opportunities for Chinese
    tech entrepreneurs and specialists at a time when domestic firms are
    laying off workers, residents also have to consider things like care for
    elderly parents, language barriers or the possibility that border
    controls will prevent them from returning home indefinitely.
    Still, internet users, both older and younger, post extensive and
    detailed articles about the logistics and technicalities of emigrating
    despite the fact that they are unlikely to act on such advice.
    Discussing the possibility of emigrating becomes both a form of fantasy
    and a way to vent.
    “People feel that runxue is a way for them not just to imagine a
    different life. It’s a way to imagine their autonomy,” said Xiang, of
    the Max Planck Institute. “It’s a way to express anger, powerlessness
    and disillusion.”
    [Stranded in their own homes: Portraits of Shanghai’s lockdown]
    Official attitudes toward emigration, once seen as a betrayal of
    socialist ideology during the early years of the People’s Republic of
    China, have loosened over the years. Waves of emigration include
    students, contract laborers, activists and other migrants in the 1980s
    and 1990s. Authorities further opened up applications from regular
    citizens for passports, which for years were limited to officials, and
    by mid-2019, about 13 percent of the mainland population had them,
    according to government data.
    Now, as authorities work to attract talent and prevent a brain drain in
    the face of a shrinking and aging population, some worry that emigration
    will once again become politicized. Over the past two years, authorities
    have issued fewer passports and restricted outbound travel in the name
    of covid measures.

    Joy Zhou sits on a cliff during a summer trip in 2018 to Yunnan, China.
    (Joy Zhou)
    Last year, China issued 630,000 passports, compared with an average of
    10.8 million annually from 2002 to 2017. In May, the National
    Immigration Administration said it would continue to “strictly restrict
    the nonessential departures” of Chinese citizens.
    On social media, internet users have posted accounts of their passports
    being taken by employers or foreign residency cards and passports
    getting cut up by border officials. The immigration authority in May
    denied that passports had been halted or that residency certificates had
    been invalidated.
    [China shuts down talk of covid hardship; users strike back]
    While censors do not appear to be heavily moderating the online
    discussion of runxue, authorities are likely to be concerned about an
    ideology that promotes abandoning the country. On WeChat, some articles
    on runxue were blocked for “violating relevant laws.” Internet users on >> GitHub said some Weibo and WeChat accounts posting immigration tips had
    been shuttered. On the search engine Baidu, data for search volume on
    terms related to emigration is no longer available to the public.
    “It’s not only what people do that shapes society. It’s also where
    people imagine their future or a good life to be. Runxue says that
    people imagine the good life to be somewhere else, and that says a lot
    about Chinese society today,” said Heidi Ostbo Haugen, a professor of
    China studies at the University of Oslo.
    “They are always ready to leave, and that does something to how you live >> your life here and now,” she said.
    For Zhu, the public relations manager in Beijing, the biggest obstacle
    to leaving is her husband, a traditional man for whom moving to Beijing >>from their hometown in Shandong was already a big request. Recently, she
    nervously broached the subject of moving with him. He did not
    immediately say no.
    In the meantime, she tries to stay busy to avoid focusing on things like
    her children spending their childhood under pandemic restrictions,
    something that causes her insomnia.
    “I just try to fill my work and life as much as possible. While I don’t >> like the current policy, who knows if it will get worse tomorrow?”


    The only *healthy* way to stop the pandemic, thereby saving lives, in
    China & elsewhere is by rapidly ( http://bit.ly/RapidTestCOVID-19 )
    finding out at any given moment, including even while on-line, who
    among us are unwittingly contagious (i.e pre-symptomatic or
    asymptomatic) in order to http://tinyurl.com/ConvinceItForward (John
    15:12) for them to call their doctor and self-quarantine per their
    doctor in hopes of stopping this pandemic. Thus, we're hoping for the
    best while preparing for the worse-case scenario of the Alpha lineage mutations and others like the Omicron, Gamma, Beta, Epsilon, Iota,
    Lambda, Mu & Delta lineage mutations combining via
    slip-RNA-replication to form hybrids like
    http://tinyurl.com/Deltamicron that may render current COVID vaccines/monoclonals/medicines/pills no longer effective.

    Indeed, I am wonderfully hungry ( http://tinyurl.com/RapidOmicronTest
    ) and hope you, Michael, also have a healthy appetite too.

    So how are you ?


    I am wonderfully hungry!


    Michael

    --
    This email has been checked for viruses by AVG.
    https://www.avg.com

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From HeartDoc Andrew@21:1/5 to Michael Ejercito on Fri Jun 17 01:30:51 2022
    XPost: alt.bible.prophecy, soc.culture.china, soc.culture.israel
    XPost: talk.politics.guns

    Michael Ejercito wrote:
    HeartDoc Andrew, in the Holy Spirit, boldly wrote:
    Michael Ejercito wrote:

    https://archive.ph/cD1wF


    Zero covid has many in China dreaming of leaving
    By Lily Kuo and Lyric Li
    June 15, 2022 at 2:55 a.m. EDT

    Zhu Aitao visits her alma mater, Leeds University, in England in 2019 on >>> her last international trip before the pandemic. (Zhu Aitao)

    Listen
    9 min

    Comment
    80

    Gift Article

    Share
    By most accounts, Zhu Aitao has it all. Now she is ready to leave it all >>> behind.
    The 35-year-old, originally from Chinas Shandong province, lives in the >>> richest district of Beijing with her husband her high school
    sweetheart and their two young children. They own their home and two
    cars, a BMW and a Lexus. They both have stable jobs: Zhu manages public
    relations at a multinational auto company, while her husband writes for
    a government-owned journal.
    Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for the latest updates on
    Russia's war in Ukraine.
    Sick of their lives being dictated by pandemic measures the frequent
    and sudden lockdowns, never-ending rounds of mass testing and constant
    uncertainty Zhu hopes to move her family to Thailand as soon as
    possible and eventually immigrate to Europe or the United States.
    I feel like Im having an emotional breakdown, she said. I feel
    powerless. Its like an overbearing father telling you that this is all
    for your own sake. You just need to listen. Dont ask questions.
    Zhu is one of a growing number of Chinese urban professionals
    subscribing to a new school of thought known as runxue, the study of how >>> to run away from their home country. For many like Zhu, it is not just >>> about Chinas severe zero covid policy, but what the future looks like >>> in a society where politics upholding the top leaders policies no
    matter the cost trumps science and the well-being of residents whose
    day-to-day lives are subject to ever more state interference.
    [Xis strict covid policies prompt rumblings of discontent in China]
    Its migration driven by a sense of disillusion, said Xiang Biao, a
    director at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany
    focusing on migration. People are not running away from the virus.
    People are running away from such top-down measures and disregard of
    individuals feelings and dignity.
    Inquiries into emigrating have surged since chaotic lockdown measures
    were imposed in April on Chinas most populous city, Shanghai, where
    residents struggled to feed themselves and watched family members die
    after being unable to get medical attention for non-covid emergencies.
    The term runxue, or the science of running, soon gained momentum
    online among disaffected residents in Shanghai and dozens of other
    Chinese cities under some form of lockdown.
    On April 3, when a senior Chinese official visited Shanghai and ordered
    unswerving adherence to zero covid, searches for emigration on the
    social media platform WeChat surged more than 400 percent from a day
    earlier and again by almost 500 percent on May 17 as restrictions
    continued. Searches for requirements for immigrating to Canada and
    Malaysia, as well as the question good immigration destinations,
    increased twentyfold between the end of March and early April, according >>> to Baidu data.
    Watching from afar, Luna Liu, a PhD candidate in England at the
    University of London who is originally from Tianjin, posted on the forum >>> Douban that she would give free advice to anyone hoping to move to
    Britain. She now has appointments booked until November, with a
    half-dozen people still on a waiting list.
    I can feel that many of those I spoke to had illusions about the system >>> at home. After the lockdown of Shanghai, those illusions were shattered. >>> They realized that if they want to live freely, they have to get out of
    there, Liu said.
    [Shanghais covid siege: Food shortages, talking robots, starving animals] >>> While runxue has not triggered a mass migration, it is the latest
    example of deeper pessimism in China amid slowing growth, historic
    levels of youth unemployment, an increasingly prohibitive political
    environment and uncertainty over Chinas openness as the country turns
    increasingly inward.
    A joke often seen online is that stressed-out urbanites have three
    options. They can continue to struggle in the rat race of Chinese
    society, making little progress in an approach known as neijuan, or
    involution, the process of turning inward in a self-defeating
    competition with others. Others may choose to opt out of a life of
    striving and instead tangping, or lie flat. Now, those with means can
    choose to emigrate, or run.
    [Young Chinese take a stand against pressures of modern life by lying
    down]
    This is definitely not a normal phenomenon, nor is it something that
    would be widely talked about in a healthy society, said Li Nuo, 45, >>>from Hebei province, who obtained permanent residency in Japan last year
    and now runs an e-commerce company in Osaka. Recently, he has been
    helping friends and family trying to leave China.
    If China is really as powerful and great as it claims, why are so many
    people willing to send themselves into exile, and why do so many young
    people have no sense of security? What this says is that this society is >>> sick, he said.

    Li Nuo and his cat, Nana, walk along the southern Osaka Bay in Japan.
    (Li Nuo)
    Foreign passports and green cards have long been the privilege of
    Chinas wealthiest families, often seeking better educational
    opportunities for their children. Now, more middle-class families and
    young people are also looking for a way out.
    Joy Zhou, 23, who works at a nongovernmental organization in Beijing,
    plans to move to Canada in the next year or two to study and hopes to
    establish permanent residency there. Zhou started thinking about moving
    abroad last year to experience living in a new cultural environment.
    Now, she feels a sense of urgency.
    Leaving is not just about the pandemic. I dont identify with about 80
    percent of mainstream social values here, she said, noting her concern
    about womens rights, the treatment of workers and increasingly limited
    freedom of speech in China. This system is without a doubt backwards.
    People seem to have learned to cope with living in an unreasonable
    system, but will our lives ever become better?
    While many talk about leaving, few will actually make the leap,
    according to Julia Jing, a consultant at Pacific Overseas Group in
    Beijing, which offers immigration advice. She said the company received
    more inquires in the first four months of this year than in the whole of >>> 2021.
    Jing said that while there are more overseas opportunities for Chinese
    tech entrepreneurs and specialists at a time when domestic firms are
    laying off workers, residents also have to consider things like care for >>> elderly parents, language barriers or the possibility that border
    controls will prevent them from returning home indefinitely.
    Still, internet users, both older and younger, post extensive and
    detailed articles about the logistics and technicalities of emigrating
    despite the fact that they are unlikely to act on such advice.
    Discussing the possibility of emigrating becomes both a form of fantasy
    and a way to vent.
    People feel that runxue is a way for them not just to imagine a
    different life. Its a way to imagine their autonomy, said Xiang, of
    the Max Planck Institute. Its a way to express anger, powerlessness
    and disillusion.
    [Stranded in their own homes: Portraits of Shanghais lockdown]
    Official attitudes toward emigration, once seen as a betrayal of
    socialist ideology during the early years of the Peoples Republic of
    China, have loosened over the years. Waves of emigration include
    students, contract laborers, activists and other migrants in the 1980s
    and 1990s. Authorities further opened up applications from regular
    citizens for passports, which for years were limited to officials, and
    by mid-2019, about 13 percent of the mainland population had them,
    according to government data.
    Now, as authorities work to attract talent and prevent a brain drain in
    the face of a shrinking and aging population, some worry that emigration >>> will once again become politicized. Over the past two years, authorities >>> have issued fewer passports and restricted outbound travel in the name
    of covid measures.

    Joy Zhou sits on a cliff during a summer trip in 2018 to Yunnan, China.
    (Joy Zhou)
    Last year, China issued 630,000 passports, compared with an average of
    10.8 million annually from 2002 to 2017. In May, the National
    Immigration Administration said it would continue to strictly restrict
    the nonessential departures of Chinese citizens.
    On social media, internet users have posted accounts of their passports
    being taken by employers or foreign residency cards and passports
    getting cut up by border officials. The immigration authority in May
    denied that passports had been halted or that residency certificates had >>> been invalidated.
    [China shuts down talk of covid hardship; users strike back]
    While censors do not appear to be heavily moderating the online
    discussion of runxue, authorities are likely to be concerned about an
    ideology that promotes abandoning the country. On WeChat, some articles
    on runxue were blocked for violating relevant laws. Internet users on
    GitHub said some Weibo and WeChat accounts posting immigration tips had
    been shuttered. On the search engine Baidu, data for search volume on
    terms related to emigration is no longer available to the public.
    Its not only what people do that shapes society. Its also where
    people imagine their future or a good life to be. Runxue says that
    people imagine the good life to be somewhere else, and that says a lot
    about Chinese society today, said Heidi Ostbo Haugen, a professor of
    China studies at the University of Oslo.
    They are always ready to leave, and that does something to how you live >>> your life here and now, she said.
    For Zhu, the public relations manager in Beijing, the biggest obstacle
    to leaving is her husband, a traditional man for whom moving to Beijing >>>from their hometown in Shandong was already a big request. Recently, she
    nervously broached the subject of moving with him. He did not
    immediately say no.
    In the meantime, she tries to stay busy to avoid focusing on things like >>> her children spending their childhood under pandemic restrictions,
    something that causes her insomnia.
    I just try to fill my work and life as much as possible. While I dont
    like the current policy, who knows if it will get worse tomorrow?


    The only *healthy* way to stop the pandemic, thereby saving lives, in
    China & elsewhere is by rapidly ( http://bit.ly/RapidTestCOVID-19 )
    finding out at any given moment, including even while on-line, who
    among us are unwittingly contagious (i.e pre-symptomatic or
    asymptomatic) in order to http://tinyurl.com/ConvinceItForward (John
    15:12) for them to call their doctor and self-quarantine per their
    doctor in hopes of stopping this pandemic. Thus, we're hoping for the
    best while preparing for the worse-case scenario of the Alpha lineage
    mutations and others like the Omicron, Gamma, Beta, Epsilon, Iota,
    Lambda, Mu & Delta lineage mutations combining via
    slip-RNA-replication to form hybrids like
    http://tinyurl.com/Deltamicron that may render current COVID
    vaccines/monoclonals/medicines/pills no longer effective.

    Indeed, I am wonderfully hungry ( http://tinyurl.com/RapidOmicronTest
    ) and hope you, Michael, also have a healthy appetite too.

    So how are you ?


    I am wonderfully hungry!


    While wonderfully hungry in the Holy Spirit, Who causes (Deuteronomy
    8:3) us to hunger, I note that you, Michael, are rapture ready (Luke
    17:37 means no COVID just as circling eagles don't have COVID) and
    pray (2 Chronicles 7:14) that our Everlasting (Isaiah 9:6) Father in
    Heaven continues to give us "much more" (Luke 11:13) Holy Spirit
    (Galatians 5:22-23) so that we'd have much more of His Help to always
    say/write that we're "wonderfully hungry" in **all** ways including
    especially caring to http://tinyurl.com/ConvinceItForward (John 15:12
    as shown by http://tinyurl.com/RapidOmicronTest ) with all glory ( http://bit.ly/Psalm112_1 ) to GOD (aka HaShem, Elohim, Abba, DEO), in
    the name (John 16:23) of LORD Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Amen.

    Laus DEO !

    Suggested further reading: https://groups.google.com/g/sci.med.cardiology/c/5EWtT4CwCOg/m/QjNF57xRBAAJ

    Shorter link:
    http://bit.ly/StatCOVID-19Test

    Be hungrier, which really is wonderfully healthier especially for
    diabetics and other heart disease patients:

    http://bit.ly/HeartDocAndrew touts hunger (Luke 6:21a) with all glory
    ( http://bit.ly/Psalm112_1 ) to GOD, Who causes us to hunger
    (Deuteronomy 8:3) when He blesses us right now (Luke 6:21a) thereby
    removing the http://tinyurl.com/HeartVAT from around the heart

    ...because we mindfully choose to openly care with our heart,

    HeartDoc Andrew <><
    --
    Andrew B. Chung, MD/PhD
    Cardiologist with an http://bit.ly/EternalMedicalLicense
    2024 & upwards non-partisan candidate for U.S. President: http://WonderfullyHungry.org
    and author of the 2PD-OMER Approach:
    http://bit.ly/HeartDocAndrewCare
    which is the only **healthy** cure for the U.S. healthcare crisis

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)