Ia few years ago, the sinologist François Jullien published a Treatise on efficiency (Grasset, 1996), who contrasted Western rigidity with the faculty of adaptation, based on the opportune grasp of the ” good time “, Chinese thought. The Beijing regime has lived a lot from this type of illusion, which also served to attract foreign investors. However, from the Maoist era, and again under Xi Jinping, it is a treatise on inefficiency, a dangerous inefficiency, that should be written to account for the impasses in which the People’s Republic of China (PRC) s is sunk.
The last of these impasses is that of the treatment of the Covid-19 pandemic. Far from pragmatism, the only factor that presided over decision-making was that of the image and power of the Communist Party and its leader Xi Jinping, which could in no way be disputed; even at the cost of a considerable cost, the extent of which is probably not yet measured.
China indeed – if we stick to the 4,665 official deaths since the start of the pandemic – has done much better than the rest of the world. The Chinese economy experienced impressive growth of 8% in 2021. The Olympics were able to be held, despite the pandemic, Hong Kong and the repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
All this collapses before the outbreak of the Omicron variant and its derivatives, much more contagious than the previous ones. China is not the only one to suffer this wave, and it seems to suffer it less strongly than others, but all it took was an unprecedented increase in the number of cases and deaths – or perhaps of their greater visibility – so that the inanity of the functioning of Chinese power is suddenly exposed to the eyes of the world.
China had managed to escape universal condemnation, after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in Wuhan, under conditions which are still not clarified. We no longer spoke of these doctors, muzzled whistleblowers, one of whom, Doctor Li Wenliang, will be one of the first victims of the pandemic. Everyone then marveled at the construction in record time of field hospitals, veritable showcases of the regime’s superiority while the rest of the world hesitated.
Outside, the arsonist acted as a firefighter by distributing masks along the new “silk roads of health”. Finally, China could announce, the first after Russia, the production of a vaccine which would also be largely imposed on neighboring countries, summoned – like Cambodia – to accept it.
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