Prof Zhang Jun

Opinion | Why China will not abandon its zero-Covid policy any time soon

Over the past two years, China’s outbreak response system has evolved to serve a population with a large number of elderly not vaccinated for Covid-19 and address regional disparities in social services and healthcare

The strategy is characteristic of Chinese policymakers’ willingness to incur short-term high costs to advance long-term development goals

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A team of health workers and volunteers check the identification of residents at a Covid-19 testing station in a neighbourhood where a suspected flare-up in cases occurred in Shanghai on May 9. Photo: Bloomberg

Prof Zhang Jun

Published: 9:15am, 20 May 2022

A tough decision to lock down Shanghai, China’s largest city, shocked the world. After six weeks, and despite a sharp decline in infections, Shanghai’s lockdown has imposed enormous costs on the city and its residents.

Given that the Omicron variant has a low mortality rate among the vaccinated, and much of the rest of the world has been convinced to shift their strategies from lockdowns and movement restrictions to mass immunisation, critics wonder why China’s zero-Covid policy is here to stay.

When Covid-19 first emerged in Wuhan in late 2019, China was ill-prepared. While the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention was established in 2002, it was never consolidated nor had it ever operated efficiently, despite the outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) the following year. So, when Covid-19, with its higher mortality rate, came along, China’s government had little choice but to adopt a wartime model, shutting down the city and mobilising additional resources on an emergency basis.

The Wuhan lockdown, which lasted 76 days, was vital under those circumstances. But if China had had an epidemiology-backed disease-outbreak response system in place, the severest restrictions probably could have been avoided, or at least shortened considerably.

In the years since the Covid-19 pandemic erupted, China has developed and implemented just such a system, including regular testing and contact tracing, centralised quarantine, and the use of big data to prevent the spread of the virus between cities. As Shanghai’s residents can attest, though this has not eliminated the need for lockdowns, it has enabled far more limited and targeted closures. Even as Shanghai’s economy takes a hit, the rest of China continues to function.

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While China’s pandemic-control policies remain more proactive and stringent than those in most other countries, the results speak for themselves. Mainland China has reported just 222,000 confirmed cases and 5,200 deaths from Covid-19, and avoided major damage to its economy. And China has good reason to impose tighter measures and not abandon its dynamic zero-Covid approach right now.