Three years in to living with this virus and we’re already seeing so many people being diagnosed with chronic health problems and becoming unable to work
Could also be due to unintended consequences of lockdowns suppressing immune systems and delayed diagnosis rates for all diseases too. Not interested in an argument over what the true drivers are, we just don’t know yet, but just saying that there could be other reasons than the panicky ‘DanteMeetsBosch’ is suggesting. Such a poorly considered comment.
What irritates me about the article is this. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the woe-is-us crowd are correct. Let’s say all those people off work have long COVID. Let’s say everyone who died in 2020 died of COVID. What, exactly, could anyone have done about that? What are we supposed to do about it now? China just gave us in-your-face evidence that lockdowns do more harm than good (aside from all the evidence from lesser lockdowns elsewhere). The suggestion from the Guardian that our politicians just weren’t tough on the virus, and tough on the causes of the virus, just makes no sense at all in the light of experience.
In other words, is it completely beyond the pale to suggest that maybe we should have dealt with this by just allowing doctors to get on with the boring, mundane job of treating the sick, and not allowing the politicians to play sillybuggers? Is it possible it’s not too late to do that, and that we should tell the journalists to just STFU already?
China descended into madness. Groups of Dabai thugs have ruled over cities, ordering about and attacking normal citizens for nearly a year, on the basis of zero Covid.
People haven’t been able to go outside. Needed to get tested every 48 hours. Rules changed everyday. People were threatened if they didn’t comply.
People were told that Zero Covid would go on for another year. New Quarantine centers were being built for tens of thousands of people in every city. What looked to be permanent testing centers were built on every street.
Then suddenly the government just said, ‘fuck it’ and got rid of all the restrictions in a week. Including all the testing centers and the health codes needed to get into every building, shop or form of transport.
Now there is major policy whiplash. Everyone has woken from a bad dream. Whole industries have been ruined and the country is suffering from collective PTSD.
There is a major trust deficit towards the government from urban folks.
Who knows why they were lifted? Definitely not clearly the protests. Think was a critical mass of the country and economy collapsing and the virus already out of control
I think the Foxconn eruption in Zhengzhou was more important than the protests in big cities. The government is much more scared of hundreds of thousands of disgruntled workers with nothing to lose
The analysis that I’ve seen thinks that it was not the (relatively isolated) Foxconn walkout that got the authorities’ attention. As long as a protest or uprising remained isolated, the government was confident it could handle it.
The problem was instead the larger collective realization that ALL people in China were subjected to the COVID Zero regime, ranging from Shanghai to Xinjiang. We’re all in the same boat and we’re all being f&cked around! Even if this kind of sentiment can be, in seminar room style, taken apart, it’s a powerful sentiment and—from what I read—viewed as a bigger threat than the isolated trouble the CCP routinely crushes.
I don’t really agree if you think about it from the party’s side and how they assess threats.
The party is very conscious of disgruntled workers as they represent the mass of the country. If they revolt, there could be contagion.
It’s also a microcosm of all factories in China. Discontent of this type, from people with nothing to lose and large in numbers, is one of the only true threats the party faces
They are less concerned about protests in cities. Urban folk have skin in the game, are genteel and have a lot to lose. They can easily deal with them
There were myriad reasons why they suddenly had a change of direction, but I would put the Zhengzhou incident far higher than the white paper protests
I’m sure there’s a method to their madness, on both the CCP side and Pfizer’s. Since Paxlovid has never been shown to have any clinically-important effect on COVID, somebody will be getting some political or financial mileage out of the deal.
As for theories, I’m inclined to accept @afterspivak’s hypothesis here. The peasants were just getting too revolting, and putting them down was getting too expensive. And in any case, the desired effect - demonstrating the power of the government to hurt you if you cause trouble - had been achieved. Better to stop while you’re ahead, lest the people find out how fragile the security state actually is, and that heads covered in silly white uniforms are as vulnerable to a good kicking as anybody else’s.
Covid and Zero Covid policy has always been a tool for fighting the trade war.
China is pivoting to a new strategy where Zero Covid policy is useless.
China showed they could shut off export supply to the world with Covid. Then they showed they can artificially suppress exports via Covid lockdowns, quarantined labor, factory closures, port closures, etc - and the US called China’s hand and said “ok if you think you can suppress export supply, then we will implode demand.” It worked. China exports fell 40% on low external demand which was compounded by Fed rate hikes, and now China is rushing to boost internal demand through their “dual circulation” concept. They are reaching to Russia for more help to boost demand. They are reaching to Saudis. They are desperate.
Xi Jinping totally expected the world to bend the knee to China - he figured he had the means of production and could push everyone around. 2020 have Xi a false sense of winning because exports skyrocketed for China — obviously because they were the only ones “open” while the rest of the world shut down or field work-from-home purchases. All that has cratered now. Xi was wrong. Not to say the western world hasn’t been impacted - they have for sure and it’s pretty bad, they endured the pain.
US is sending a few more uppercuts in Chinas direction with more Fed rate hikes. Goal is to totally strangle demand in Chinese made goods until the Xi Regime throws its hands up.
I’m also pretty sure the lockdowns were in large parts to show the world what happens if China stops exporting items - but yeah as said - we will not see any large scale action from China before they don’t have oil and gas pipelines all the way from Russia.
Any kind of full trade war (stopping all exports to the West) or Taiwan blockade will not happen before that.
In that case China will not be able to control / keep open the sea route to the gulf states - so it needs a backup plan for energy.
The lockdowns were to give Europe and US a taste of what would happen if they don’t agree to Taiwan takeover (and then quite likely South Korea and Japan in future - in order to have 99% of worldwide high tech / chip production in a single country - which is the ultimate goal.)
At the same time China needs to wait out for Europes collapse a bit longer - which will not happen before end of winter 2024
Keeping your options open…
But complete reliance on Russia is most likely in case of a war with sea routes closed. Most scenarios assume this in case of a full (trade) war.
Then somehow the zero covid didn’t seem to apply to the elites anyhow that much. Some of my Shanghai friends seemed to manage to leave Shanghai before any kind of lockdown and spend their time skiing or sunbathing during the spring lockdowns as I could see on their wechat posts. They are mainly annoyed they couldn’t go on their usual America/Europe trips.
Is China open now for tourism/leaving China and returning without quarantine? I haven’t really seen any updates on those yet and all of my wechat friends still stuck in China as it seems to me (but then they would not leave China before 25.12 or so usually anyhow for holidays)
I wonder if there could have been kind of an analog of that within the party.