(New York) Until recently, Chinese President Xi Jinping was hyping his “zero COVID” policy and bragging that one-party authoritarian states like China are better equipped to deal with pandemics (or any other crisis) than messy democracies hampered by selfish politicians and fickle electorates.
Such a doctrine may have seemed plausible to many people in 2020, when hundreds of thousands of Americans were dying and former US President Donald Trump touted antimalarial drugs and bleach injections as cures for COVID-19. 19.
At the same time, Xi imposed rigid pandemic restrictions that nearly brought the entire country to a standstill and forced people into isolation camps. For a time, this strict regime appeared to limit the number of deaths from COVID, compared to most other countries (although Chinese government statistics are notoriously unreliable).
But the high economic costs of China’s zero COVID strategy drove people to such desperation that some eventually took to the streets to protest. But Xi continued to claim that the ruling Communist Party was waging a “people’s war” against the virus and would do everything in its power to save lives. Then late last year, when protests erupted in Chinese cities, the end of the war was suddenly declared. No more confinements, no more protective suits, or even regular PCR tests.
After the unprecedented protests of last year, it seems that China now regards COVID-19 as harmless.
But due to Xi’s flip-flop, the poor quality of Chinese-made vaccines and China’s low vaccination rate, nearly 9,000 Chinese are likely dying every day and 18.6 million across the country have been infected since the lifting of anti-COVID restrictions in early December. And the situation could easily get worse.
total power
These developments suggest that the Indian economist Amartya Sen was right when he argued in 1983 that famines are caused not only by a lack of food, but also by a lack of information and political accountability. For example, the Bengal famine of 1943, the worst to hit India, occurred under the rule of the British Empire. After India’s independence, the country’s freedom of press and democratic government, though flawed, prevented similar disasters from happening again. Sen’s thesis has since been hailed as an outright defense of democracy.
Although some critics have pointed out that elected governments can also cause massive damage, including widespread starvation, Sen points out that starvation has “never happened in a functioning democracy.”
China’s one-party, and increasingly one-man, system of government is formulated in communist or nationalist jargon, but is rooted in fascist theory. German jurist Carl Schmitt, who justified Adolf Hitler’s right to exercise total power, coined the term “decisionism” to describe a system in which the validity of policies and laws is not determined by their content, but by the will of an omnipotent ruler. In other words, Hitler’s will was the law. Decisionism aims to eliminate class conflict, factional conflict and painful political opposition. The will of the people, often expressed by a rigged plebiscite, is exercised by the leader who decides on behalf of the people.
The catch
Autocratic centralization can indeed have certain advantages. Top-down decisions, often implemented by skilled technocrats, have enabled China to build high-speed railways, sophisticated highways, excellent airports (even the most remote ones are modern marvels compared to JFK from New York or most other major airports in the United States) and even entire cities within a few years.
When the Party is always right, elements such as public opinion or parliamentary debate cannot stand in its way.
But when a real crisis occurs – earthquakes, pandemics, etc. –, the vulnerability of the decisionist regime comes to light. This is why autocratic leaders must hide or embellish statistics and silence critics like the Dr Li Wenliang from Wuhan, who first reported the threat of COVID-19 in 2019 and was publicly criticized for “spreading false rumours” before dying of the disease in early 2020. Whatever they do, the Absolute rulers and the parties they lead cannot be wrong.
maintain a facade
In the United States, by contrast, expert opinion, critical media, and the risk of losing the 2020 presidential election have forced even that clumsy Trump to funnel vast amounts of money into research and development of vaccines.
Despite many mistakes along the way and perverse obstruction by demagogues and conspiracy theorists, the democratic response to the pandemic has been consistent with Sen’s book: the press and public opinion have carefully scrutinized the official statistics, most people have been vaccinated, and the United States, along with other Western democracies, has gradually opened up, allowing people to go about their business safely.
Even without Xi’s absolutist aspirations, this would have been difficult to achieve in China. To justify its monopoly of power, the Communist Party had to maintain a facade of infallibility, making it impossible to condemn the most colossal errors, even in retrospect.
The nationwide famine of the 1950s is often blamed on bad weather and natural disasters rather than Mao Zedong’s catastrophic Great Leap Forward. Even as at least 30 million Chinese have died, officials have remained silent, fearing it could cost them their lives by annoying the Grand Helmsman with bad news.
Of course, China isn’t as isolated as it was in the 1950s, Xi isn’t Mao, and his erratic decision-making probably won’t kill 30 million. But with 9,000 deaths a day, the costs will be enormous. And precisely because China is no longer isolated, the implications will extend far beyond China’s borders. Viruses, after all, travel, and so do economic disruptions. The damage inflicted on China by its autocratic regime ends up hurting us all.