Donald Low

Opinion | Beijing’s insistence on zero-Covid strategy challenges long-held assumptions about China

Despite vaccinating three quarters of its eligible population, China shows no signs of transitioning to a Covid-endemic approach like the rest of the world

This challenges long-held assumptions about the Chinese state being a strong, high-capacity one that thinks long term, and about an isolationist China being the result of Western efforts to contain her

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A woman walks past a billboard depicting medical workers in Beijing. Photo: AP

Donald Low

Published: 12:30pm, 22 Oct 2021Updated: 12:45pm, 22 Oct 2021

When the New Zealand government acknowledged at the start of October that it cannot eliminate Covid-19, that left China (including Hong Kong and Macau) as the only major country still pursuing a zero-Covid strategy. This is not just a public health choice; it is also likely to have long-term economic and geopolitical consequences.

There is little doubt that before the arrival of Covid-19 vaccines, the strict suppression approach pioneered by China – and mimicked across East Asia – was highly effective in limiting the spread of the coronavirus, preventing health-care systems from being crushed, and giving societies a certain degree of normality once infection numbers came under control.

There is also little doubt that most governments in the West bungled their initial response to Covid-19, resulting in much higher fatalities.

Two factors have changed the Covid-19 calculus. The first is the emergence of the far more transmissible Delta variant and the second, of course, is the arrival of highly effective vaccines.

The combination of the two factors explains why in places with high vaccination rates, a relaxation of social restrictions has led to a surge in the number of infections, but a much smaller increase in deaths and cases requiring hospitalisation.

This gives other countries hope that once vaccinations reach a certain threshold, they can begin to deal with Covid-19 as endemic.

The only exception to this story of Covid-19 normalisation has been China. Despite having vaccinated about three quarters of the eligible population, authorities show no signs of letting up on zero-Covid and transitioning to a Covid-endemic approach. Its insistence on zero-Covid also reveals three truths about the Chinese state that go against the grain of conventional wisdom.