Home » Markets at the mercy of the Covid nightmare in China: counterfeit test alerts. CNN: record protests since Tiananmen

Markets at the mercy of the Covid nightmare in China: counterfeit test alerts. CNN: record protests since Tiananmen

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Markets at the mercy of the Covid nightmare in China: counterfeit test alerts.  CNN: record protests since Tiananmen

Asian stock markets negative, after the weak closure of Wall Street and in the face of negative US futures. The Nikkei 225 index of the Tokyo stock exchange closed down by 1.59%, Shanghai stock negative with -0.29%, Hong Kong -0.28%, Seoul -1.84%, Sydney -0.72 %.

US futures down slightly, posting losses ranging from -0.09% in futures on the Dow Jones to -0.29% in futures on the Nasdaq.

Weighing on Asian equities is the uncertainty about the changes to the Zero Covid policy that the Beijing government has allegedly decided to make to quell the anger of citizens, exhausted by the lockdown measures. An uncertainty that has been fomented in the last few hours by the publication of an article in a newspaper controlled by the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party.

The now-deleted article reported that the results of some tests for the detection of the virus, including some conducted in Shanghai and Beijing, were forged.

In particular, some diagnostic laboratories have been accused of having changed the results of some tests that had instead indicated the positivity of patients to the virus to “negative”.

Boom of criticism on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter: “If the chaos of virus tests never stops, the pandemic may never end”.

It is currently unknown to what extent the reference laboratories responsible for diagnosing cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection have falsified the results.

As early as the end of November, the authorities had discovered that the Lanzhou Nucleus Huaxi Laboratory had shown negative Covid results in patient records, when in reality the patients were positive.

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The Covid chaos has intensified after the Beijing government’s decision to loosen some restriction measures following the strong protests that swept across several areas of the country. In dozens of districts of Shanghai and Guangzhou, the lockdowns have been lifted. The problem is that these are two cities that are seeing a leap in daily cases of Covid infections.

The protests and demonstrations, reports CNN, are so rampant that they have never been widespread since the Tiananmen protests of 1989. In recent days, several students have organized demonstrations at various universities; in general, people have poured into the streets of Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Lanzhou, and other cities, according to videos that have been circulating on social media.

The demonstrations initially started from Urumqi, in Xinjiang, last Friday, following a fire that claimed 10 lives the day before in an area that had been under lockdown for months.

According to the protests, the checks launched by the local authorities to guarantee the isolation of the residents would have delayed the arrival of the firefighters, causing the death of ten people.

The anger of the Chinese is also explained by the fact that the restrictions of the Zero Covid Policy are continuing to weigh down the growth of the country’s economy, which is now facing a youth unemployment rate of around 20%. Some videos showed protesters calling for the resignation of Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party itself.

But the point, pointed out a few days ago Hui Shan, chief economist of the China division of the US giant Goldman Sachs, is “that there are gaps in the medical field, precisely where the virus has evolved to such a level that it has made the ‘very costly implementation of the zero Covid policy’.

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Shan warned that “there is also a 30% probability of a reopening that will be brought forward”, but in a “forced” way, in a China that does not have an alternative plan to the lockdowns in managing the pandemic.

The economist explained that a forced exit from China’s Zero Covid policy could see government and local authorities reduce anti-Covid controls before the country is really ready to deal with an inevitable increase in infections.

Going back to the Asian stock exchanges, the caution on equities can also be explained by the expectation for the publication of today’s market mover, which will influence the trend of the global markets, also giving crucial information to Jerome Powell’s Fed, in view of the upcoming meeting December 13-14.

This is the US employment report for the month of November, which will be announced at 2.30 pm, Italian time: economists interviewed by Dow Jones expect that, in November, new jobs increased by 200,000 units, down on to growth of 261,000 units in October. The hope is that the numbers support the opinions of those who believe that US inflation has reached its peak and that Jerome Powell’s Fed can launch less aggressive rate hikes: hypotheses to which the Fed president himself has opened up.

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