How much longer can China keep up its zero-Covid strategy?

[Emily]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...g-policy-protecting-public-health-coronavirus
How much longer can China keep up its zero-Covid strategy?


Emma Graham-Harrison

Sat 1 Jan 2022 12.45 EST

Desperate residents in China’s western Xi’an city are running out of food after they were barred from grocery shopping in a fierce lockdown. In the southern province of Guangxi, people who broke Covid laws were recently publicly shamed by being paraded through the streets in Hazmat suits with placards round their necks.

The rest of the world is learning, slowly and with some difficulty, to live with Covid-19, but in China, authorities are doubling down on their “zero-Covid” policy: trying to stamp out the disease whenever it appears, and at any cost. A single case in a border town led to 200,000 people being locked down late last month.
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A combination of mass vaccination, social pressure and highly transmissible new variants has persuaded other once “zero-Covid” countries – including Australia, New Zealand and Singapore – to begin slowly opening up again to the world.

Inside China, some senior scientists and officials have also taken the political risk of calling for similar reopening, in recognition of a world where it seems Covid will become endemic. Gao Fu, head of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, suggested recently that the country could be ready when vaccination rates pass 85%, perhaps early in 2022.

Others have joined scientists abroad, warning that even Beijing’s autocratic powers and popular support for lockdowns and other control measures may not be enoughto keep highly transmissible new variants out.

“China will have great difficulty with Omicron and a zero Covid policy,” Tulio Oliveira, director of South Africa’s Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation, said on Twitter. He is part of the team that first alerted the World Health Organisation to the new variant.

“They may need to join the rest of the world with mitigation strategies. China should not punish its public health officials or citizens or foreigns because (of) a more transmissible variant.”

Whatever the cost, China is likely to push extremely hard to keep the virus under control for most of this year, ahead of two high-profile, high-stakes events...

 

[sharon sanders]

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[Emily]

https://jamestown.org/program/a-bit...sts-the-limits-of-chinas-zero-covid-approach/
A Bitter Winter: Omicron Tests the Limits of China’s Zero-COVID Approach
By: John S. Van Oudenaren
January 14, 2022 05:44 PM Age: 1 week

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Despite the high economic costs and growing public frustration with life under zero-COVID mandates, General Secretary Xi Jinping has doubled down on the current approach, particularly given recent findings that Chinese vaccines are mostly ineffective against the Omicron variant (Taiwan News, December 24, 2021). China has largely averted the virus surges that other countries have suffered, but the policy of quarantining millions to contain small outbreaks is a brute force approach to epidemic prevention. It is not only economically costly, in some areas such as Xi’an, quarantine restrictions have been implemented in a draconian fashion, which has created temporary deprivation and engendered popular resentment toward government authorities, particularly at the local level. In response to growing internal and external criticism, the CCP has sought to shape a positive narrative about China’s zero-COVID strategy by emphasizing its collective benefits, controlling information about the domestic situation in China, and redefining success in the battle against the virus.
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In late December and early January, as logistics in Xi’an became increasingly strained, food prices skyrocketed. On Weibo, a Xi’an resident posted that normally a single Cabbage was around 8 RMB ($1.30) but during lockdown cost 33 RMB ($5.19) (Weibo, December 30, 2021). Of course, most people had no choice but to pay exorbitant prices for whatever food was available. Early in the lockdown, jokes about cooking cabbage circulated on social media as it was the only procurable food for many people (NPR, January 5).Lack of food drove some people to take even more drastic measures, Taiwanese broadcaster TVBS reported social media posts showing people killing a cat to eat (TVBS, December 31, 2021).
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Over the last month, an Increasing number of outbreaks in large urban areas have led to partial shutdowns of major manufacturing and infrastructure centers. Several large factories producing smartphone chips and auto parts have shuttered in Xi’an, and sections of Ningbo, Zhejiang, one of the world’s biggest ports, have closed (Samsung, December 29, 2021; NPR, January 7). Due to the probable continuation of a zero-COVID strategy through 2022, Goldman Sachs recently downgraded its projection for China’s 2022 growth from 4.8 to 4.3 percent (CNBC, January 11). Nevertheless, Xi is likely to prioritize stability above all else as he seeks to lock in another 5-year leadership term at the 20[SUP]th[/SUP] party congress this fall, and hence is unlikely to loosen restrictions and risk a major COVID-surge.

John S. Van Oudenaren is Editor-in-Chief of China Brief.

 

[sharon sanders]

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