Despair Rising – China’s Anti-Covid Hammer Falls on Everyone’s Head

Mr Yu in lockdown wants to see a doctor, has a slight fever. “I have nothing to eat. I feel terrible,” the older gentleman said in an urgent phone call to his neighborhood committee. He is also out of medicine, complains Mr Yu. His request to receive medical treatment or to have a computed tomography made went unanswered for days by a higher authority. “Do you mind if I die?”

No medical treatment
The officer on the other end of the line is stunned: “We are powerless and can’t do anything about it,” he says, complaining about the senior positions. “They don’t do anything for the elderly, pregnant women and the elderly.” A recording of the conversation goes online, outraging millions until censorship removes it. Desperate reports are circulating on the internet that the elderly or chronically ill have not received medical treatment and have died as a result. China’s zero-covid strategy is falling into chaos and the organization is no longer working the way its leadership would like. Across the country, 400 million people are affected.

The nerves are raw. State media admits that “doubt, fear and fatigue are palpable”. Residents insult pandemic leaflets with white faces or police officers who act violently against protesting residents, as videos on the Internet show. Residential areas are monitored from the air with drones. High fences and construction fences hermetically seal houses. Robot dogs, tethered to blaring megaphones, run through empty streets: “Wear masks, wash your hands regularly, and measure fever!” This will probably take weeks.

What comes from China is becoming scarcer and also more expensive
Strict restrictions imposed by China’s zero-covid strategy are slowing its second-largest economy more than expected. Industrial production fell surprisingly by 2.9 percent in April and consumer spending also fell sharply. China’s insistence on the zero-covid strategy is also becoming an increasing threat to the global economy.

“US: 1 million dead, China: 1 million saved”
The restrictions have significantly reduced freight traffic across the country. Supply chains are broken. Many companies had to stop or shut down production. Container traffic via the world’s largest port in Shanghai fell sharply. Cargo ships from all over the world get stranded there. China’s leadership defends its zero-covid policy with the human rights argument: “The US accepted a million dead, China saved a million,” according to a state media editorial.

But that could change immediately if the zero-Covid strategy collapses in the onslaught of the Omicron variant. Then even Beijing expects up to 1.5 million fatalities. Beijing has in mind Hong Kong as an example: there, omicron erupted like a tsunami on an insufficiently vaccinated population, killing 9,000 people. At the start of the pandemic, China outperformed many other countries with its zero-covid strategy, especially in the democratic West, who sought a middle ground – often hotly contested – between radically limiting contacts and minimizing contact as much as possible. preserving freedom.

In any case, the zero-Covid strategy has a strong impact on the entire global economy. Prominent Chinese investor Fred Hu recently told the New York Times that it was “high time” for Beijing to change its strategy. The benefits of the zero-Covid strategy would no longer justify the current economic costs. International European and American companies are already considering withdrawing parts of their production from China.

Covid hit back at China
In Beijing, you can spin it however you want: China has caused the worldwide spread of the Covid-19 virus – through a serious flaw in the political system. It doesn’t matter whether the plague originated in the city of Wuhan or not: it raged there for weeks as political leadership did everything they could to cover up the facts, and one doctor was even silenced as a “troublemaker” who wrote on the Internet alarmed the public. Everything wouldn’t have happened if China’s communist system hadn’t prevented countermeasures for at least a month. The catastrophe took its course in the world – the world would have gladly done without this “New Silk Road”.

Normally you only make a mistake once and learn from it. But China managed to make the same mistake twice: once in 2003 with the SARS epidemic and in 2019 with Covid-19. So it is clear that this behavior, this self-harm and endangerment of others, is inherent in the system of a totalitarian police state. On the ladder of obedience, no lower level wants to pass bad news to the next level up and back again to the next level up. Dictatorships who don’t want bad news to “spoil” their successful propaganda have no choice but to. The Chinese professor Gerd Kaminski, who himself experienced the SARS epidemic in China in 2003, heard from the head of the health authority deep in the province: “Atypical pneumonia is not a notifiable disease. Therefore, we had not seen the need to inform the public.”

authorities fired
In the case of Covid-19, the response from the authorities was similar. It was not until January 23, 2020 that an attempt was made to calm the Chinese public, annoyed by the rumours, with reports that countermeasures would be taken after all. The party is always alert. Also, the response to misconduct by local party officials and officials was faster and more thorough compared to SARS. City and county authorities responsible were fired and the doctor who had warned the public and who had since died of Covid-19 received a grand mourning ceremony.

Omicron pushed politics to its limits
It even managed to stop the plague while the whole world suffered from Covid and the countermeasures. But then came Omicron and the zero-covid policy, which had reached its limits, is now becoming China’s grave economic self-harm. And, worse, people don’t want to be locked up anymore. China hasn’t seen so much disobedience in a long time.

Why is the leadership so tough in defending its zero-covid policy? First, because she was so successful initially; Secondly, because there is no (!) compulsory vaccination in China and so many old people are not vaccinated. If China followed Covid measures in the rest of the world alone, the health system would simply collapse due to the large population. The self-proclaimed world champion in fighting the pandemic is caught in his own trap. If Beijing relaxes now, it could trigger a huge wave of infections.