OPINION: China is stuck in the lockdown mentality because it initially worked. It’s now strangling the economy and beginning to trigger serious unrest.
A war over Taiwan? A clash in the South China Sea? Throw in, too, the danger of a financial crisis sparked by a property crash. There’s no shortage of catastrophes canvassed for China, which, for the moment, haven’t eventuated.
Multiple the emerging chaos at the Apple factories many times over, with lockdowns either underway or threatened in Beijing and the upscale and downmarket manufacturing centres around Shenzhen and Guangzhou in southern China, and the impact at home and abroad becomes dire.Local officials are floundering under conflicting objectives dictated by the centre. On the one hand, they are being told to “maximise people’s health”; on other, to “minimise impact on the economy”.
In the US, more one million people died with or from COVID-19. In China, the official toll ticked up by a few deaths in recent weeks, to just over 5300. Remarkably, the number had not moved for about a year.Although the Chinese numbers are doubtless understated, the contrast with the US is nonetheless real and stark. Or at least it was, until the omicron variant penetrated Beijing’s defences earlier this year and the lockdowns returned.
In the early days, the COVID Zero policy had a rational basis. China has a patchwork health system – not bad in some wealthier cities, but poor to non-existent in many parts of the country. The main levers that the government uses to encourage vaccinations, such as being able to go to work and send your children to school, don’t work with the elderly.
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