China’s zero-tolerance policy in dealing with the corona virus has long been seen as a sign of superiority over the western system. In Shanghai it is now about to fail. This harms Xi Jinping.
«Perseverance is victory!» reads the banner at the National Exhibition and Convention Center in Shanghai, which has been converted into an isolation hall.
The lockdown chaos in Shanghai mercilessly exposes the madness of an authoritarian regime. On social media, residents of Shanghai share videos filmed with their cellphones as a sign that they no longer support what is being played here.
The images show people singing and screaming from the windows of their tower blocks until a drone hovers over them. She says in a robotic woman’s voice: “Please control your soul’s desire for freedom.”
They show small children who are separated from their parents in hospital-like isolation halls. They show an older man in an undershirt being forcibly pushed to the side of the street by young men in full gear with two-meter-long pliers. Is this really the modern, glittering financial metropolis of Shanghai?
Xi Jinping doesn’t want to risk deaths
The weaknesses of China’s corona policy are now becoming apparent. China has failed to adequately vaccinate its elderly population to protect against severe cases. 40 percent of people over 80 are still unvaccinated. China’s healthcare system, already in dire straits in normal times, is not up to the challenge.
However, party and state leader Xi Jinping still wants to prevent large numbers of people in China from dying of omicron. The risk is too high for him, because the party conference is coming up in the fall, at which he wants to extend his term of office beyond the usual limit of ten years. So he’s only left with the old, draconian means: sealing off everything. mass testing. Anyone who is positive has to go to an isolation hall.
There, people crammed together, sometimes with only one toilet for 1,000 people, until their test is negative again. There is a high risk that her illness will get worse there, if only because of the psychological stress.
For Xi, however, turning away from the zero-tolerance policy would amount to a personal defeat; an admission of not being infallible. After all, Xi already celebrated China’s handling of the pandemic as a success in 2020, as a triumph of the Chinese over the Western system. But now it is becoming clear that even the zero-tolerance strategy for Xi is fraught with political risks. Because at Omikron it no longer works. The incubation times are too short, and patients who are still asymptomatic spread the virus before they are tested. Contact tracing becomes almost impossible.
At the same time, the price for the measures is increasing. Foreign companies are leaving. China’s Prime Minister Li Keqiang is concerned about the damage China’s economy could suffer, speaking of “major uncertainties”. And above all: the population is frustrated. More people are probably dying in Shanghai at the moment because medical help comes too late due to the lockdown mania than from Covid – officially there has not been a single death out of a total of 130,000 infections.
China remains locked in lockdown fever indefinitely
The Covid chaos in Shanghai could have been avoided. At the latest after the warning debacle in Hong Kong, prevention would have been announced, above all through an intensified vaccination and booster campaign for the elderly. The efficient mRNA vaccines from Biontech/Pfizer or Moderna are still not approved in China. Instead, China’s state media launched a propaganda smear campaign against the foreign mRNA vaccines early on and reported alleged deaths after vaccination.
The weaknesses of the health system are now becoming apparent. This is still underdeveloped in China, especially in rural areas. Even in the city, the only way to get sick of any kind is to go to the hospital, where you have to pay in advance and wait a long time. A family doctor system is being tested in some cities, but is still in its infancy.
But instead of tackling the obvious systemic problems and specifically protecting the elderly, Xi chooses to rush forward. The zero-tolerance policy should definitely be adhered to, and criticism of it is stifled. Preventive isolation halls are now being built in China’s cities. While the rest of the world has learned to live with the virus, China remains locked in lockdown fever, indefinitely.