China's coronavirus epidemic may or may not have passed its turning point, but the nation's policy on Covid-19 has certainly done so. Central Communist Party leadership in Beijing has recognised that it has to back down from crisis mode, get the country moving again, and learn to manage the disease long term.
Even allowing for doubt about the public health statistics, which Beijing is citing to justify the move, it could not have been put off much longer: economic slowdowns also have negative public health effects, and extreme quarantine measures quickly lose their value once the epidemiological cat is out of the bag.
