Freedom, the rule of law, elections, free criticism of the authorities are not only “Western values”.
The yearning for freedom is universal, as tens, if not hundreds of thousands of citizens took to the streets of China’s major cities to demand it last week. By chanting unheard of slogans, never seen or heard since the Tian’anmen revolt in 1989.
Three years ago, at the dawn of a sad period for humanity, the Chinese authorities initially reacted with an embarrassed, guilty and murderous silence. Then, at the end of January 2020, they imposed a draconian closure on the 40 million inhabitants of Hubei province, after the official recognition of the first outbreak of the virus in Wuhan. A focus whose exact story (spontaneous transfer of the virus to the human species or laboratory error) remains to this day a mystery shrouded in suspicion and political calculations.
On the heels of this recognition followed, in February 2020, a very timely “mask diplomacy” made in China and distributed around the world. This propagandist offensive enabled the Chinese Communist government to inexpensively afford an image of seriousness, efficiency, generosity… and political superiority.
In doing so, he maintained opacity on his fluctuations of the first weeks and on the exact origins of the virus.
Abandoning the (more or less sincere) modesty of his predecessors in the face of the rest of the world, Xi Jinping took advantage of this crisis to present China as a superior political model, in the face of democracies (Europe and North America) mired in the pandemic.
In this first phase, the “Zero COVID” applied to Hubei appeared as a Chinese triumph: practically no cases after the first wave of Wuhan.
But this triumph would not last forever.
Today, Xi Jinping’s regime is suffering a triple “backlash”: epidemiological, economic and political.
Epidemiologically, China experienced the first waves of COVID-19 “under glass” (in total isolation), with quantitatively and qualitatively inferior vaccination (the weakness of the Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines). If it wants to “open up”, it finds itself more vulnerable than other regions of the world.
These other regions, having suffered the full force of the first waves, have acquired a certain immunity. There is also the case of countries that have abandoned “Zero COVID” after embracing it (Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia, etc.). There are several elements that do not exist in China: elected governments, independent media, public opinion that can protest, scientists who speak freely.
Economically, “Zero COVID” is terribly expensive: this country, which has long surfed on growth rates of 8 to 10%, will struggle to achieve 3% in 2022.
Those in Quebec who have complained about the harshness of the confinements should look to Shanghai and Beijing in the spring of 2022, where we imposed restrictions of a harshness and a cruelty without common measure with what we have known. here.
In China, we padlocked the exits of buildings, fenced off blocks of houses, locked workers in their factories, imposed daily PCR tests on hundreds of millions of people. So much so that Japanese specialists have estimated the total cost of administering these tests at 2% of GDP – just the tests!
“Zero COVID” was not just a health strategy. It was an opportunity to apply the Chinese obsession with control at all costs, total, maniacal. The regime’s obsession with monitoring and controlling the population to the limits of the tolerable.
Today, many Chinese see behind this “protective” strategy – which many had initially adhered to – an intolerable restriction on freedoms. The “epidemiological” criticism leads to a questioning of the legitimacy of the system. Because, in a totalitarian regime like that of Xi Jinping, everything hangs together.
François Brousseau is an international business analyst at Ici Radio-Canada. [email protected]