“Only when theEpidemic is under control the economy can be stable, and people’s lives peaceful. A relaxation of prevention and virus control would inevitably increase the risk of infection among vulnerable people”. Just a couple of months ago the very official People’s Daily thus rejected the perplexities of the West, defending the sword drawn Zero Covid, the very strict health strategy based on the claim of absolute control of the virus. Not anymore today. The era of the mass testingof the continuous lockdowns, of contact tracing, health codes, and centralized quarantine. In early December, Beijing he suddenly backtracked opting to accept what he had been advising for some time experts foreigners: that is, letting the infection take its course to achieve herd immunity.
China has had over two years to prepare for this moment. Yet the images bounced on social network – despite the censorship filter – tell a country in serious trouble: hospitals small, decimated medical personnel, lack of medicines, and deaths. How many is not clear. Official statistics count around 5,000 symptomatic cases and fewer than ten deaths since December 4. But the ranks of the hearses and the testimonies of relatives suggest that this is a grossly underestimated budget. According to Financial Times, a funeral home in Beijing claims to have cremated 30 Covid patients in one day. The National Health Commission clarified on Tuesday that only patients who die of respiratory failure will be counted in the official Covid death toll; not those with pre-existing chronic diseases, the leading cause of death attributed to the Omicron variant. According to several studies, without a rapid expansion of the vaccination campaign, China could face one million deaths by the end of 2023. It is a race against time. And according to reports from health authorities in a closed-door meeting, reported the Financial Times250 million people became infected in the first 20 days of December.
Infections and vaccines – The problem lies in the inadequacy of intensive care, in the lack of medical assistance outside the big cities, and above all in the low level of immunization. While 90% of its population has been fully vaccinated, less than half of the over 80s – the most fragile individuals – have received the third dose. Not to mention the controversial decision to bet everything on Chinese compounds, which have an efficacy rate of 44-94% with two doses whereas BioNTech ensures 75-96% protection for all age groups. Only on Wednesday did Germany manage to ship a first batch of BioNTech vaccines to China, for the moment intended exclusively for German expats. Taking into account travel for the Lunar New Year, according to Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, China will face two more waves of infections – in addition to the current one – between the end of January and mid-February, and between the end of February and mid-March. Much will depend on the local administrations, called to interpret and adapt the rules issued by the central government to the various contexts. A scenario that worries the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO needs more detailed information on disease severity, hospital admissions and requirements for ICU support, the head of the organization said yesterday. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesusquestioning the previous predictions for 2023. Especially in the (still rather remote) eventuality that more aggressive variants should develop from the last wave.
The Chinese state press flaunts optimism. Giving voice to some experts, the English-language newspaper China Daily a couple of days ago he predicted a return to normal as early as next spring. Instead, confusion, hope, and sometimes anger prevail among the population. “These published statistics are ridiculous, they are so fake…”, writes a user on Weibo. While some hard and pure continues to justify the choice of government, overall, the overwhelming timing of the reopening seems to displace the citizens. Not random after all. If signs of an easing had already been in the air for some time, there is no doubt that the real trigger was the November 27 protests, when hundreds of people demonstrated in major Chinese cities to demand end of the Zero Covid policy. However, no one expected (and probably hoped for) such a disorganized reaction.
Does profit sacrifice the fragile? – From the palaces of power, the will to bring the economy back to the center of the political agenda, severely hit by health restrictions, clearly emerges. Even at the cost of sacrificing the older population. The so-called protests of the “A4 sheets”, carried out above all by students, have uncovered a youthful discontent that has roots in very high unemployment and in an increasingly uncertain future. However, Beijing’s new business-oriented strategy risks calling into question all the rhetorical scaffolding built by the party since 2020: the superiority of the Chinese model was based on the ability to save more human lives than Western democracies, which instead had sacrificed the population following the logic of profit. A goal actually achieved even net of the revised data. But, in the blink of an eye, we have gone from the “war of the people”, a collective effort coordinated from above, to an individual duel with the disease: citizens are now called to take responsibility for their own health firsthand. A about-face that risks undermining the credibility of the establishment, until the day before yesterday inclined to manage the emergency with a protective and paternalistic approach.
Having archived the Zero Covid mantra, the new keyword is “optimize”, or – as the Foreign Ministry explains – “finding a balance between epidemic prevention and socio-economic development.” Not an easy mission. The World Bank has revised its estimates for Chinese growth in 2023 downwards from 8.1% to 4.3%. In Chongqing and Zhejiang province, civil servants with mild symptoms are invited to work even if they are positive. The multinationals do their best as they can by continuing to operate at a reduced rate. Of course, the reputational damage isn’t just to Chinese public opinion. At an international level, the historic internal stability and predictability of policy making processes under the leadership of the single party has been considered for decades as one of the factors that made China a manufacturing hub of global importance. There are still no signs of a substantial retreat. But the latest findings from the various foreign chambers of commerce show widespread pessimism about the future. About 49% of recently surveyed German companies believe that China’s attractiveness has diminished compared to other markets. Only 51% plan to invest further in the country within the next two years. In 2021, 71% said the same.