How Zero-COVID resulted in 60,000 dead
By: You-Yan Wang
Three years have passed since COVID-19 first rattled the world back in 2020, but while countries like the US have returned to a sense of normalcy, the motherland of the virus, China, is now in a deep predicament. After holding off the virus successfully for a long period of time, authoritarian policies aimed at suppressing COVID-19 by triggering lockdowns upon the discovery of a new case have ramped up with increasingly harsher enforcement. The disastrous effects of COVID-19 have only been exacerbated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its “Zero-COVID” policy, which has been drawn out unnecessarily for nationalistic purposes. Now that China has decided to relax this policy, a public health crisis now rises in in its midst.
A graph depicting the general trends of China’s COVID data, whose numbers are very much lower than the true number of cases due to the infrequent and often misleading reports from the Chinese government
China’s authoritarian system, implemented to stifle the virus, has not been effective in the long term. Meant as a stopgap solution to snuff out the virus and its variants by cutting off transmission of the virus through government-mandated shutdowns, these policies have simply not proven sustainable. For one, directly governing Chinese citizens through sudden quarantines and required testing protocols has not been cheap, with a minimum estimated expenditure of 46 billion dollars per month. “Zero-COVID” and its related lockdowns have also halted the economic growth of the nation, dropping from an average of 7.7% a year to 2.9% in the final months of 2022. For one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, this drop is substantial and has caused the country to stagnate financially. In this crisis, many have lost their jobs, with the Chinese unemployment rate rising to highs of 6.1% in April 2022, and recently, 5.5% in December 2022, figures well above the traditional average of about 4.69% in the past two decades. Yiwu, a city in China’s Zhejiang Province, has seen mass business closures and an absence of consumers during the typically popular Lunar New Year period, following a 10-day shutdown in August 2022. By hindering the country’s financial growth through mass expenditure and lockdowns, as well as hurting small businesses and workers, Zero-COVID has not given the Chinese economy room to breathe.
China’s COVID-19 shortcomings are clear from an economic standpoint, but what is perhaps even more alarming is the toll the autocratic policy takes on Chinese citizens. Due to a surge in cases in March of 2022, many called into question the efficacy of China’s policy. Tense lockdowns, as well as a looming dire financial situation, were instrumental in spurring the eventual “white paper revolution” conducted by Chinese people who were frustrated by “Zero-COVID.” Protesters were also outraged by the fire in Xinjiang that killed 10 people as a result of forced lockdowns, which delayed potential rescue efforts. These protests are evidence of the CCP’s ignorance when it comes to the real cost of maintaining their low COVID numbers. To reach the goal of stifling COVID, a practically impossible task, the Chinese government damaged the livelihoods of citizens, who retaliated by taking to the streets in protest.
China’s citizens protest Zero-COVID with blank paper in defiance of the CCP
To President Xi Jinping and the top leaders of the country, this policy is primarily image-focused. Xi’s institution of himself as the “commander in chief” of a “people’s war” against the virus has made the concept of zero-COVID synonymous with himself and his close advisors. Dropping the policy ahead of the 20th National Congress in October 2022 would have tarnished the president’s image before such a monumental and unprecedented occasion for the communist regime.
Nonetheless, Xi’s ignorance of his wrongdoings has only caused further damage to China’s citizens. The prolongment of “Zero-COVID” established the idea of international superiority over antagonistic western rivals, namely the United States. When the US and other countries were struggling, Zero-COVID was relatively effective at keeping the virus at bay, a sign the Chinese took as a mark of their regime’s superior effectiveness. Yet, the CCP refused to let go of the policy even slightly, even when science had told them it was necessary to. The refusal to ease out of the policy has been China’s fatal flaw in their handling of the virus.
Comparing China with other countries that employed an authoritarian model to address COVID shows even more flaws in China’s authoritarian policy. New Zealand, a country notable for its strict lockdown protocol to curb COVID in its early stages, trusted the statistics on COVID in the country and acted accordingly, rather than retaining an unsustainable policy for far too long. As a result, they have now lifted mask and vaccine mandates as of September 2022, when case numbers reached figures low enough for them to do so, after easing the policies slowly for the past year. China’s authoritarian elimination policy has not been effective in the long-term, as the relative successes of other countries are now beginning to show three years on, while the Chinese are suffering.
The fallout of Zero-COVID’s sudden drop has proved itself worse than the conditions that precipitated it and confirmed what many predicted about the fragility of the policy. Since the u-turn on December 7th, millions of cases have swept through the country, with a government scientist claiming that 80% of China’s 1.4 billion had been infected with the virus. China reported 60,00 COVID-related deaths on January 14th in that timeframe, yet those figures need to be taken with a grain of salt given the uncredible nature of sources near the top of the Chinese Communist Party. The quest for herd immunity has sacrificed the elderly, who form a large contingent of those who have fallen to the virus. This is ironic, considering the respect placed on the elderly in traditional Chinese culture. It shows the true priorities of the Chinese government in this massive tragedy that has incurred so many losses.
A hospital in China struggling to deal with an influx of COVID-related patients
China’s controversial COVID-19 policy that intended to suffocate the virus has done far more harm than good. It has failed to properly address the long-term future of the virus in the country, exposed the true nature of the CCP’s intentions with the policy, and now that it’s suddenly gone, has incurred a great loss of life. To neutrals watching China’s massive tragedy unfold from the sidelines, one can only hope that herd immunity will help improve a dire situation in a dark time for the Asian country.
