As the world learns to live with the virus, Beijing is insisting on eliminating it, a strategy that fuels social unrest and has high economic costs.
The “covid zero” policy adopted by China has provoked something very unusual: a series of protests in several important cities of the country against the harsh lockdowns imposed to contain the spread of the virus.
Thousands of people took to the streets to demonstrate their rejection of these measures, some even going so far as to openly criticize the government of President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party of China – which, according to analysts, face the biggest challenge to the authorities since of the protests in Piazza della Pace Celeste in 1989.
But how to explain these demonstrations against a strategy that, judging by the statistics of deaths and covid infections, seems to have worked?
According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), about 9.6 million cases of the disease and about 30,000 deaths associated with it have been recorded in China since the beginning of the pandemic.
These are very low numbers when compared with the 97 million cases and one million deaths recorded in the same period in the United States, a country that has a quarter of the population of China.
The problem is that Beijing’s strategy has only been able to contain the disease thanks to the adoption of draconian measures, such as keeping the country’s borders essentially closed, while implementing drastic internal lockdowns, affecting entire cities of millions for weeks .
This hampered the country’s economic performance. International organizations predict 2.8% GDP growth for the Chinese economy this year, well below the 5.5% forecast by Xi Jinping’s government.
“China has cornered the zero covid policy by imposing very strict rules on people and communities,” Jack Chow, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the US and former WHO deputy director general, told BBC News. BBC Spanish.
He warns that this policy faces intense pressure.
“First because, despite these draconian measures, the number of covid cases has continued to increase,” he explains.
“Second, because it not only constrains Chinese economic growth, but also disrupts supply chains around the world.”
“And thirdly, because social unrest is spreading across the country as ordinary people start to chafe over these restrictions,” he adds.
Despite this, Beijing has shown no signs of easing its zero covid policy – which at this time would also imply significant risks for China, experts warn.
Because?
an inflexible strategy
During the initial phase of the pandemic, when there were no vaccines against covid-19, other countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea, among others, adopted similar approaches to China’s zero covid policy.
As vaccines and other coronavirus treatments emerged, these countries lifted lockdowns and opened borders, while Beijing maintained the same policy.
So while the rest of the world has learned to live with the virus, Beijing has insisted on eliminating it through lockdowns.
And, although it has successfully avoided contagion, its population has consequently been more exposed to the disease for not developing the natural immunity obtained by those who were infected.
That policy has created what Yanzhong Huang, the Council on Foreign Relations’ chief global health researcher, has called an “immune gap.”
Except that after nearly three years of the pandemic, most of China’s 1.4 billion citizens have not been exposed to the virus.
“In the rest of the world, people acquire immunity in two ways: vaccines and natural infection, but in China there was no natural infection,” explained Jin Dong-Yan, professor of molecular virology in the University’s School of Biomedical Sciences. of Hong Kong, to BBC News World in February.
Even the second way, that of vaccines, does not favor Beijing, which has not authorized the use of mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) developed in the West.
In China, eight covid-19 vaccines have been approved for use, but none use mRNA technology, according to the Covid-19 Vaccine Tracker platform.
Among the vaccines developed in the Asian giant there is already one, Walvax, which is based on mRNA, but its use is authorized in Indonesia – and not in China.
“Strong immunity against Covid-19 cannot be achieved without effective vaccination, and China’s inactivated vaccines have proven to be much less effective than the messenger RNA vaccines used in Europe and the United States,” Yanzhong Huang warned in a article published in Foreign Affairs in January.
“Ride on a Tiger”
The dangers from Beijing’s covid strategy were warned by consultancy Eurasia Group, which ranked China’s zero covid policy as the top global threat for 2022 in its annual report on key geopolitical risks.
“China is in the most difficult situation with a covid-zero policy that seemed incredibly successful in 2020, but is now fighting a much more transmissible variant, with broader lockdowns and vaccines with limited effectiveness.”
“And the population has virtually no antibodies to omicrons. Keeping the country closed for two years made reopening riskier,” the report notes.
With China’s population lacking natural immunity and with little acquired immunity derived from vaccines, authorities are at risk of an outbreak of infections spiraling out of control and causing the country’s health system to collapse.
“The collapse of the healthcare system would actually be a bigger disaster than covid itself, as seen in Wuhan. Many of the deaths were caused by this collapse, rather than the disease,” Jin Dong-Yan explained to BBC News World.
A further problem is that it is unclear how prepared China’s healthcare system is to deal with a sharp increase in covid cases.
In a statement to the American newspaper The Washington Post, Yanzhong Huang warned that Beijing should have started efforts to have more intensive care unit (ICU) beds and better vaccination two and a half years ago, but focusing solely on containing the infections, ended up allocating fewer resources to those targets.
Faced with this scenario, Jack Chow believes that, in a prospective analysis, China has difficult options ahead of it.
“One path would be to continue the lockdown strategy in hopes of flattening the Covid-19 curve, but this would continue to fuel tensions in society and the economy.”
“The other way would be to start making these measures more flexible, in response to social problems, but at the risk of an acceleration of infections,” he says.
This is not, however, a minor risk.
Estimates released this week by health consultancy Airfinity indicate that if Beijing now suspends its zero covid policy, the lives of 1.3-2.1 million people would be at risk.
Therefore, Chow believes that China could choose to double down on its preventive efforts, but by incorporating mRNA vaccines.
“They have a lot of experience with mask wearing and social distancing, but they haven’t diversified their vaccine options to include major Western-created vaccines,” he notes.
This decision could reduce the risks that, by easing the lockdown measures, there is an increase in infections that will end up overloading the Chinese health system.
Chow suggests, however, that there may be other issues at play that would make Western vaccines difficult to use, even if they’ve been updated to cope with the latest variants.
“The question is whether vaccine selection is based on political pressure. Do they see the use of Western vaccines as a sign of failure or loss of prestige?”
“I would say that the most effective strategy to deal with the pandemic is to use the most effective means, no matter where they come from. So there are very likely political issues at stake, and this makes China’s politics follow more complex.” than public health strategists would recommend,” she says.
In addition to these issues, it is important to remember that President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party of China have defended the zero covid policy, which analysts say is already making it difficult to change course.
The country thus finds itself between the risks of a collapse of the health system due to a wave of uncontrolled infections and the political price that could mean a change of course – including the possibility of allowing the use of Western vaccines in the country.
In this context, the situation faced by Beijing with its zero covid policy seems to recall what happens to those who “ride a tiger”, according to the ancient Chinese proverbs: once you get on, you dare not get off.
– This text was published in https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/internacional-63819358
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Camila Luna is a writer at Gossipify, where she covers the latest movies and television series. With a passion for all things entertainment, Camila brings her unique perspective to her writing and offers readers an inside look at the industry. Camila is a graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in English and is also a avid movie watcher.
