While the rest of the world is struggling to live with Covid, there are signs that China is determined to stick to a zero-tolerance approach to the pandemic. In late December, it locked down Xian, a city of 13 million in northwestern China. The quarantine measures were so draconian some residents ended up bartering cigarettes and tech gadgets for food. Over the weekend, Tianjin, a city of 14 million adjacent to Beijing, started testing all residents after the omicron variant surfaced.
The capital, after all, is due to host the Winter Olympics in four weeks.
There’s more than sports at stake. China is the world’s biggest manufacturing hub, and another shutdown at one of its ports could mean there are no toys for kids or that your home remodeling will be delayed. With the hyper-infectious omicron, it’s almost fanatical to insist on zero infections. Wouldn’t its people revolt at never-ending lockdowns?
That’s why China has begun to rewrite the narrative.
According to the government, “Covid zero” is no longer China’s policy goal. Rather, it’s aiming for “dynamic clearing,” which relies on local governments to stamp out local outbreaks. Here’s the wording from Liang Wannian, the head of the government’s Covid expert panel, at a mid-December press conference held by the National Health Commission and endorsed by the State Council, China’s supreme governing body:
We do not yet have the ability to prevent local cases from appearing, but we have the ability and confidence to quickly put an end to an epidemic when a local case is found, so this is what we want to emphasize on. It is not the pursuit of "zero infection", but the pursuit of eliminating the epidemic as soon as possible.
In particular, Beijing is now talking up “speed” and “precision.” We are already familiar with the notion of speed, which refers to early mass testing and intensive contact tracing to nip local outbreaks at the bud. What’s new is the word precision, which showcases Beijing’s reluctance to quarantine millions and incur the resulting economic costs. In fact, one could argue that Xian had to resort to a citywide lockdown — the first large-scale one since Wuhan almost two years earlier — because the local officials could not get the virus under control within a few weeks.
What this policy means is that while some cities will endure harsh disruptions for a few weeks, the rest of the country can pretty much run without restrictions. Put another way, Xian residents took a hit for the team.
For evidence, look no further than travel data. In recent days, while traffic has plunged in Xian, there’s been no visible effect in other cities, noted Ernan Cui at Gavekal Dragonomics. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Transportation recently predicted that passenger travel in the 40 days of this Lunar New Year holiday season (from January 17 to February 25) might even surpass the 2020 level, part of which was pre-Covid.
For President Xi Jinping, the “dynamic clearing” narrative is almost failure-proof. The onus is now on local governments. If the Chinese are outraged by food shortages and denied medical care in Xian, incompetent municipal officials can be blamed. On the other hand, if Beijing finds omicron too fast-moving and lockdowns too costly, it could always step back and say it never pursued zero infections in the first case. It’s a win-win soundbite.
Xi is nothing if not pragmatic. He’s been willing to recalibrate his grand plans. For instance, China’s infrastructure investments in commodity-rich Africa have slowed in recent years despite their prominence in his 2013 Belt and Road Initiative. Beijing has also cooled on chip startups that offer little know-how or experience even though semiconductor manufacturing remains an integral part of his ambition to upgrade China’s manufacturing sector. When the economics no longer work, Xi is willing to shift.
Granted, all eyes are on China right now. With the Winter Olympics less than a month away, Beijing might feel compelled to keep Covid infections in check, just to show the world it has triumphed over the virus. However, the crowd will disperse — on Feb. 20, to be exact — and then China can get some breathing room and shift quietly away.
Often times, policies are more about narratives than substance. China has found its own way of living with Covid. It’s not as stubborn as one might fear.
Bloomberg
