{"id":43591,"date":"2022-12-15T16:26:28","date_gmt":"2022-12-15T15:26:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/?p=43591"},"modified":"2022-12-15T16:26:32","modified_gmt":"2022-12-15T15:26:32","slug":"china-loosens-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/china-loosens-up\/","title":{"rendered":"China Loosens Up"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>The newspaper headlines read for the past several days: \u00abChina is relaxing its anti-Covid measures.\u00bb That is encouraging. Because of its \u2039Zero Covid\u203a policy, people were sometimes locked up in their homes for months, tested daily, and were exposed to the fear of testing positive and having to go to one of the designated closed hospital wards. Not to mention the fear that the government could suddenly turn the digital health passport red.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Of course, the anti-Covid measures in other countries worldwide, including Europe, have often been intrusive and anti-freedom. It seems, however, that China&#8217;s \u2039Zero Covid\u203a policy has led to particularly tough life situations, despair, and even rebellion. This was shown by the pictures of violent protest demonstrations that reached us from China in recent weeks \u2013 an unusual phenomenon in China. The fact that a country&#8217;s government, often described as a dictatorship, is deciding to relax its measures in the face of the protests is rightfully to be welcomed. Incidentally, it should be noted that the lockdown measures in China, although extremely harsh, were always targeted. In contrast to Europe, compulsory vaccination was a much less used means. Each country has its own strategies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In one form or another, the health crisis has caused great suffering and raised fundamental questions about freedom around the globe. It seems we live in a time when the problem of freedom is becoming central. And given this problem, an Anthroposophical approach poses two questions: can a society flourish \u2013 also economically \u2013 without promoting the individual&#8217;s freedom? And: Can freedom really flourish under the rule of an exclusively materialistic worldview, which denies freedom because of its mechanistic character? These questions are just as valid in China as elsewhere \u2013 but the challenges take on a different face depending on the historical, cultural, and political context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Image taken in Shenzhen, China. Photo: Joshua Fernandez<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Translation<\/strong> Monika Werner<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The newspaper headlines read for the past several days: \u00abChina is relaxing its anti-Covid measures.\u00bb That is encouraging. Because of its \u2039Zero Covid\u203a policy, people were sometimes locked up in their homes for months, tested daily, and were exposed to the fear of testing positive and having to go to one of the designated closed hospital wards. Not to mention the fear that the government could suddenly turn the digital health passport red. Of course, the anti-Covid measures in other [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17570,"featured_media":43614,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8835,9266,2515],"tags":[11277,8803,8799],"class_list":["post-43591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-china-en","category-nachricht","tag-2022-49-en","tag-news-en-2","tag-worldwide"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17570"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}