China is Trapped in its Ineffective and Brutally Enforced "Zero COVID" Policy
It is unclear if Beijing has any plan to move away from the "Zero COVID" policy and recognize that COVID19 is here to stay
China was the first country to experience the COVID19 outbreak in 2020. Two years later, although many countries have lifted their COVID19 restrictions and gradually returned life to normal, China continues to be trapped in its ineffective and often brutally enforced "Zero COVID" policy, unable to find an off-ramp.
On January 23, 2020, after initial delay and cover-ups of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China announced the lockdown of Wuhan and three other nearby cities, with a total population of 60 million people. Even though Beijing declared its victory over COVID19 as early as March 19, it has continued to impose a "Zero-COVID" policy, relying on mandatory testing, quarantines, and border control to practically completely isolate the entire nation from the rest of the world.
As of August 25, 2020, COVID19 infected over 5.9 million Americans, and about 183,198 patients lost their lives. Yet, China, which has a population more than three times that of the United States, insisted that its number of infections was only 84,996, and the number of deaths was 4,634. Beijing credited its "Zero COVID" policy for keeping the nation's COVID19 cases numbers and death tolls low, while other countries struggled to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
Although many people have no confidence in the accuracy of China's official COVID19 statistics, some in the west bought Beijing's lies and praised how the pandemic "has fully demonstrated the superiority of Chinese governance... that the Chinese model is the only 'successful" response to COVID19."
Chinese scientists rushed out COVID19 vaccines as early as June 2020. The Chinese government imposed a vaccine mandate in December 2020, even though these made-in-China vaccines had gone through limited clinical trials and had reported a low efficacy rate. For example, China's SinoVac has an efficacy of 51%, barely above the World Health Organization's threshold of minimum 50% efficacy for emergency authorization.
Still, to reach Chinese leader Xi's goal of getting 80% of the Chinese population vaccinated by October last year, local authorities deployed extreme coercive measures, including having police dragging unvaccinated people to the hospital and forcibly injecting COVID19 vaccines without the patients' consent.
Additionally, through its "vaccine diplomacy," the Chinese government exported its COVID19 vaccines to more than 80 countries, hoping to score diplomatic and propaganda wins. But China's vaccine diplomacy backfired as countries relied on Chinese vaccines, such as Chili, Brazil, Indonesia, and Mongolia, reported a surge of COVID19 infections in their countries because the Chinese vaccines were not as effective in reducing the spread of COVID19.
Chinese vaccines have been even less effective in curbing the spread of more infectious coronavirus variants such as Delta and Omicron. The long isolation of the Chinese population since the beginning of the pandemic means there was low herd immunity (when a large portion of a community becomes immune to disease). The combined effect of low herd immunity and Chinese vaccines' low efficacy is that the Chinese population has become vulnerable to more infectious COVID19 variants. Since last fall, China has experienced another COVID19 outbreak.
At this time, however, many countries’ experiences have demonstrated that lockdowns didn’t work -- they didn’t slow the spread of COVID19. Instead, lockdowns wracked economies and had caused other problems such as learning loss, mental health issues, and increasing suicide rates. Countries such as Sweden and Taiwan, which stayed relatively open, had experienced far less number of cases and deaths than countries such as Italy and the United Kingdom, which implemented harsh lockdowns.
A Johns Hopkins University study further validated these countries’ experiences with findings showing that lockdowns only prevented 0.2% of Covid-19 deaths and were “not an effective way of reducing mortality rates during a pandemic.”
Yet, despite these findings, the Chinese government resorted to re-impose lockdowns and restrictions. Driven by the unattainable goal of “Zero COVID,” these same failed measures have been implemented with Chinese-style zealousness.
Mothers in Ruili, a border town in Southwest China, reported "their toddlers being numb to regular swab tests." After a train attendant was identified as a close contact of a confirmed case, Chinese authorities sent thousands of people on a high-speed train from Shanghai to Beijing into quarantine. Some residents in Beijing complained "being sent to centralized quarantine or being locked in their homes—with sensors outside their doors—after a contact-tracing app identified them as having been to the same location as confirmed case."
Xi'an, a city of 13 million residents, imposed a lockdown in mid-December last year. Schools were closed, and most public services were suspended. No indoor dining or outdoor gatherings were permitted. Only one person from each household can go grocery shopping every two days. Many hospitals in the city have dedicated their capacity to COVID19 patients and stopped admitting non-COVID patients. Tragically, an eight-month pregnant woman lost her baby after several hospitals refused to accept her because her COVID test was a few hours too old.
In early March, the Chinese government imposed a lockdown in Shenzhen, China's tech hub and a manufacturing powerhouse where many export-oriented factories, including Apple's key supplier, are located. The city government carried out three rounds of mandatory mass testing, "with medical staff going door-to-door to make sure no one avoided the screening." Many had worried that Shenzhen's lockdown would worsen the global supply chain woes. After weighing the economic impact, the city government lifted the lockdown and allowed factories to resume work after one week.
At the end of March, the government of Shanghai, China's largest city with 25 million people, announced that it would impose a lockdown in two phases over the next week and a half. Before this announcement, some sectors in Shanghai were already under lockdown for weeks. The announcement sparked panic-buying from Shanghai residents. Many crazy images (see here, here, and here) online show the miseries Shanghai residents are enduring.
Local authorities practically turned neighborhoods into giant jails by using wire fences to prevent residents from going out. Patients have a hard time getting hospital admission or even getting their prescriptions refilled. The saddest story I heard (which couldn't be independently verified) is that a granny who lived alone was starved to death in her apartment because she ran out of groceries.
Besides human suffering, there are economic concerns. Shanghai is China's most influential finance and international trade center. It has China's largest port, and is home to thousands multinational companies. China's largest steel company and foreign carmakers such as Tesla Inc. and General Motors Co. run factories there. The city accounts for about 4% of China's GDP. The latest lockdown order forced many businesses to shut down and factories to halt production.
Throughout China, regions experiencing Shanghai-style lockdowns represent about one-third of China's GDP. These lockdowns are estimated to cost the Chinese economy $46 billion per month in economic output. Economists are concerned that China's continuing "Zero-COVID" approach will hurt China's economic growth this year and dampen global economic recovery, worsen the supply chain issues, and increase the risk of a worldwide recession.
Few know how bad the current wave of COVID19 outbreak in China is. In contrast to the Chinese government's harsh measures, China reported case numbers and death tolls are meager. According to China's state media, "Confirmed cases on the Chinese mainland now total 143,240, with the death toll remaining at 4,638" as of March 27th, 2022. These numbers are grossly inaccurate, especially the number of death tolls -- how could the death toll remain about the same since March 2020?
After two years of repeated lockdowns and disrupting lives, even the most compliant Chinese people are frustrated at Beijing's seemingly never-ending "Zero COVID" policy. It is unclear if Beijing has any plan to move away from the "Zero COVID" policy and recognize that COVID19 is here to stay, so China must learn to live with it.
One man, Chinese leader Xi, is responsible for China's “Zero-COVID” policy . Since he came to power in 2012, Xi has consolidated power, cracked down on dissenting voices, eliminated term limits, and became China's dictator-for-life. Like all dictators, Xi has surrounded himself with "yes" men. No one dares to challenge his policy or tells him the truth that he doesn't want to hear. There are no independent media in China to call Xi out and no election to hold him accountable for his poor decisions. Xi has all the power but zero accountability. Therefore, China is trapped in this "Zero-COVID" policy as long as Xi still believes it is a good idea. Unfortunately, as we have learned from the COVID19 pandemic, Xi's lousy policy doesn't affect China only. The rest of the world will pay the price too.