(Beijing, China) The ability of the Chinese authorities to implement a large-scale policy is still impressive and the about-face it has made regarding its zero COVID strategy, applied in an almost religious way for almost three years, does not exception.
Almost overnight, the government began dismantling the previously ubiquitous COVID-19 testing tents. State media began to claim that the symptoms of the Omicron variant were mild. Quarantine measures imposed on residents of many cities were suddenly lifted: residents of Guangzhou, for example, went from quarantine at home to being able to go to a karaoke bar within two hours.
The post-COVID era has arrived in China. What will be its consequences?
Now that strict quarantine measures are a thing of the past, Chinese people will be able to resume their pre-pandemic lives. They will return to the office, shop in malls, dine in restaurants, and visit parks and temples — without having to take daily COVID tests, or risk being confined to a quarantine center.
China cannot, however, pretend that the pandemic has disappeared. Vaccination rates, especially of the elderly, remain low. Only 40% of those over 80 have received three doses of vaccine (including a booster dose). And the capacities of Chinese hospitals — 3.4 intensive care beds per 100,000 people — are significantly lower than those of developed countries. The UK has three times as many, the US 7.5 times as many and Germany 10 times as many.
We must therefore expect a massive increase in infections and deaths, and increasing pressures on the health system.
While this is clearly a serious challenge, China must confront it in order to re-enter the post-COVID world.
This reversal will be painful, especially given the deep-seated reservations of many Chinese about Western vaccines and medicines, and it will be a difficult political test for the government and the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The advantage offered by the current situation is that the government can pretend that it is obeying the will of the people. Indeed, the protests that have erupted in Chinese cities in recent weeks may have given the government the reason it needed to abandon a policy it has touted too much, and for too long.
Zero COVID and Omicron
At the beginning of 2020, the strict containment measures imposed by the Chinese authorities effectively managed to control the spread of COVID, giving time for the rest of the world to apply similar policies to contain the coronavirus. Unfortunately, the other countries did not take this opportunity and in 2020 and 2021 they suffered wave after epidemic wave linked to new variants. While the number of fatal cases rose elsewhere, China, thanks to its zero COVID strategy, lived without the virus.
Then the Omicron variant appeared. Its characteristics should have prompted the government to change its approach. But would the Chinese have accepted it? Abandoning the zero COVID policy would be hard to justify for anyone who, encouraged by a government they trust, has spent years believing that COVID could be deadly.
It would also be difficult to explain it to all the CCP members who have worked tirelessly to defend the Party and its policies.
Certainly, Omicron was different. But in a country that places such importance on saving face, the government needed other excuses to relax its health policy. Recent protests against containment measures have provided one. Cases will multiply and the healthcare system will be strained, but the voices of citizens will have been heard.
This does not mean that the Chinese government will tolerate further protests. On the contrary, he will act firmly to suppress them. Authorities have already banned many social networks, fearing they are facilitating an uprising similar to those that erupted in the Arab world a decade ago. The fact that protesters were still able to hold rallies in several major cities suggests that even tighter control of social media is looming.
Growth under COVID
The 20e Chinese Communist Party Congress last October stressed “full, precise and comprehensive implementation of the new concept of development” as the Party’s main priority “for governance and the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”. Yet the Chinese economy is stagnating.
The country’s GDP growth was just 3% in the first three quarters of 2022, the slowest rate (apart from 2020, when the pandemic began) since Deng Xiaoping launched the policy. economy of “reform and opening up” more than 40 years ago.
The drivers of Chinese growth have also changed. In 2019, household consumption contributed the most to growth, with a sharp decline in exports. Today, domestic demand is on a negative trajectory, if only because containment measures have eroded consumer confidence and income.
Chinese leaders are well aware that the sluggish economy will shake people’s trust in the government and undermine the legitimacy of the CCP. So between restoring growth and maintaining the increasingly contested zero COVID policy, growth wins. The good news is that given the high efficiency of stimulus delivery, China’s economy could recover surprisingly quickly.