President Xi Jinping defended China’s lockdown-dependent approach to fighting the pandemic, even as he sought to reassure the world that the country was still committed to opening its economy.
Nations must expand cooperation to ensure a recovery from the virus-fueled downturn of the past two years, Xi told the opening ceremony of the Boao Forum for Asia via video link Thursday. While Xi made no mention of the Shanghai lockdown or the growing debate over the costs of China’s Covid Zero strategy, he reaffirmed the underlying goal of minimizing deaths.
