If Vladimir Putin hadn’t ordered an invasion of Ukraine, the headline-making story right now would be the intensifying war between China and COVID-19. In Shanghai (pop. around 26 million), state officials announced on March 27 that the eastern half of the city would be locked down until April 1 for mass COVID-19 testing. When that’s accomplished, the western half will be locked down until April 5. Health officials conduct tests across shut-down areas, and an infected resident can be forced into
a quarantine facility.
Tens of millions in Jilin province and the tech-hub city of Shenzhen (pop. 17.5 million) have already been locked down. But the closure of Shanghai, the commercial and financial heart of the world’s second largest economy, is the most drastic move yet taken as part of the “zero COVID” policy, a plan designed to keep COVID-19 infection numbers as close to zero as possible. The plan has been successful in limiting the spread of the virus. China’s leaders have reported fewer than 5,000 deaths over the course of the pandemic as the death toll in the U.S. nears 1 million. Even if China’s official numbers are suspect (and they are), the loss of life has surely been proportionally much closer to the levels reported in Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore, which, until recently, have also exercised ultra-strict COVID-control policies.
But zero-COVID exacts a heavy economic toll. China’s economic growth has been slowing for years as rising wages reduce incentives for foreign companies to use China as a manufacturing hub and as large-scale state investment in infrastructure and real estate development creates an oversupply of both. The pandemic and the war in Ukraine raised the costs that everyone, including China, must pay to import fuel, food, and other commodities. Shutting down half of…
Source : time
