By Jimmy Wang
In China, every single apartment block, residential complex, and village that’s at high-risk and medium risk for COVID infections can be publicly viewed here.
For a country as authoritarian as the People’s Republic of China, this degree of centralization would have probably been expected even in the early days of the pandemic. But why are such drastic measures still being taken 2 years after the emergence of COVID-19? And after the director-general of the WHO, Tedros Ghebreyesus, declared that “the end of the pandemic is in sight”? Indeed, as of September 6, 2022, 33 cities are in various levels of lockdown in China. According to The People’s Daily (人民日报), a new system of “test on-arrival” has also been introduced at train stations, airports, and road connections between provinces.
Commendable Beginnings
Compared to other countries, China is now the black sheep in its handling of the pandemic. Yet, during and after its initial stages in 2020, she was globally praised for having acted efficiently to stop the large-scale community spread of COVID. Hardline lockdowns and movement restrictions were enacted across the country. Then, in February 2020, the WHO organized an international mission to visit 5 cities in China and examine the country’s response to the outbreak. Their report was practically glowing with praise.
“China’s bold approach to contain the rapid spread of this new respiratory pathogen has changed the course of a rapidly escalating and deadly epidemic… China’s uncompromising and rigorous use of non-pharmaceutical measures to contain transmission of the COVID-19 virus in multiple settings provides vital lessons for the global response.”
This initial success was followed by a 2-year period from April 2020 to February 2022, where the daily case count never exceeded more than 200 people. For a country of 1.4 billion people. In Wuhan, the initial epicenter of the pandemic, college kids were clubbing maskless and with no social distancing in August of 2020.
Spirits were slightly dampened by accusations of a cover-up of the origins of the virus. The UK, US, and 12 other countries released a joint statement in March 2021 that denounced the recent WHO report on the beginnings of the pandemic in Wuhan.
“There’s a second stage in this process that we believe should be led by international and independent experts. … They should have unfettered access to data. They should be able to ask questions of people who are on the ground at this point in time, and that’s a step the WHO could take.” – White House press secretary, Jen Psaki.
Yet at that time the future looked bright for China. She was unique in her position of having adjusted to the new normal, at a time when other countries were still trying to define it.
Second Wave
In March 2022, the arrival of the Omicron variant led to a massive spike in new infections. In just one week, the total case count (25 thousand) exceeded the total case count for all of 2021. Yet the mortality rate had sharply declined compared to the original variant of COVID that was being spread in 2020. Just 0.02% – 0.06%, and even less than the common flu in Jilin province.
“After many mutations, compared to the virus that had caused 3800 deaths 2 years ago, an earthshaking change has happened to the properties of Omicron” – Sina News.
Indeed, the state changed its core strategy in controlling regional outbreaks. Since 95% of cases were asymptomatic or exhibited mild symptoms, the National Health Commission decided to split the patients being quarantined at public facilities into 2 groups: Those who needed medical supervision in hospitals, and those who could stay outside of them.
Despite these science-based improvements in policy, widespread movement restrictions started to again be enacted to prevent community spread. This practice continues until now. To justify these actions, the state began to use a new term: Dynamic zero-COVID (动态清零).
Dynamic Zero-COVID
Dynamic Zero-COVID is China’s new approach to limiting infections. Through daily testing, as soon as a group of infections is discovered, those individuals are cordoned off until that local outbreak has been purged. This is part of why the massive list of infected apartment blocks and villages is available online; the information must be collected anyways in order to enact this policy.
“If we’re balancing the overall cost, our prevention measures are the most economic and effective.”, says Chang Jile, vice administrator of the National Administration for Disease Control and Prevention. “The policy is to latch onto the small parts, the foundational parts. To as quickly as possible extinguish the infections as they’re discovered, with the lowest cost to society.”
In contrast to Mr. Chang’s view, China’s GDP fell by 2.6% in the second quarter of 2022, right during the second wave of lockdowns. Factory activity also shrank in July, as the manufacturing purchasing managers index fell from 50.2 to 49.0.
The human cost has been too tremendous. On September 6, a 6.6 magnitude earthquake struck Chengdu. Many residents attempted to flee their apartments, only to find that the gates were locked to enforce regional lockdowns.
Dissent came to a head with the fatal crash of a bus taking 47 people to a quarantine facility in Libo county, Guizhou. At 2:40 a.m on September 18, the bus overturned on a remote stretch of highway, killing 27 people.
This tragedy perfectly symbolizes China’s fight against COVID-19. It’s a story of wishing to save lives while damaging countless others in the process. We can quantify infections and deaths, but we can never know how innumerable lockdowns have tortured the soul of my country.