16.02.2023
Governments across China spent a lot of money last year to control and control the new crown epidemic. Among them, Guangdong Province spent tens of billions of yuan on vaccines and nucleic acid testing, which increased the financial burden of local governments.
(Deutsche Welle Chinese website) According to the annual budget reports of Chinese local governments, Chinese provinces spent at least 352 billion yuan on the prevention and control of new crown pneumonia last year. That has strained the finances of China’s provinces at a time when China’s economic growth is slowing.
Among China’s 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, at least 20 have announced their prevention and control expenditure data for 2022; the calculation methods of each province are different, some places include government expenditures at all levels, and some only include provincial levels.
The data shows that wealthier provinces spend more, with Guangdong spending the most. Last year, it spent a total of about 71.1 billion yuan on nucleic acid testing, vaccines, and subsidies for medical staff. This figure is 56.8% higher than the new crown-related expenses in 2021, and more than double that in 2020. This is also equivalent to 0.6% of Guangdong’s gross national product (GDP) in 2022; before the epidemic, China spent about 5% of its GDP on public health every year.
Last year, Beijing spent about 26.4 billion yuan on epidemic prevention. The picture shows people in Beijing being screened in December last year.
The province with the second largest spending is Jiangsu Province, which spent about 42.3 billion yuan on epidemic prevention last year, more than 28 times higher than in 2021. Shanghai has spent a total of about 16.7 billion yuan in response to the epidemic, including treatment, construction of temporary hospitals, and purchase of medical equipment. As for Beijing’s expenditure, it is about 26.4 billion yuan, more than double Beijing’s public health budget last year.
At the end of last year, the “white paper movement” broke out in various parts of China. Soon after, the government abandoned the strict zero-clearing policy and relaxed the epidemic prevention control. At the beginning of January this year, China reopened its borders. At that time, China’s official media Xinhua News Agency wrote: “(The virus) has obvious characteristics of hidden transmission, and it is difficult to eradicate it. The social cost and price of epidemic prevention and control have become higher.”
In addition, the decline in revenue from the sale of state-owned land use rights in China has also aggravated the financial difficulties of local governments.
(Reuters, The Guardian)
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