The government authorities in China appear to be in increasing confusion, due to civil discontent against the unprecedentedly authoritarian restrictive measures against the pandemic. The cases of Covid-19, mainly in Shanghai now exceed 320,000 in the last 45 days and since the new wave of the pandemic broke out in the country, and the brutal implementation of the measures in China is causing dismay around the globe.
China's health authorities today announced the first three patient deaths due to complications of COVID-19 in Shanghai since a lockdown was imposed on the Chinese financial capital at the end of March.
The Asian giant, where authorities continue to implement a "zero cases" policy of the new coronavirus, has officially recorded only 4,641 deaths due to COVID-19 since SARS-CoV-2 was identified in its territory, in the city of Wuhan, in late 2019.
In a statement uploaded to social media sites, the Shanghai municipality clarified that the three patients who succumbed were elderly people with underlying diseases.
The two previous deaths due to COVID-19 in China were announced in mid-March in Jilin province (northeast), which borders North Korea.
Shanghai confirmed 19,831 asymptomatic cases of the virus in the last 24 hours, up from 21.582 on Saturday, while 2,417 symptomatic patients were recorded, up from 3,238 the previous day.
The Chinese financial capital has now become the theatre of the worst outbreak of the pandemic since the onset of the health crisis, with tens of thousands of cases confirmed daily.
More than 200 million nucleic acid tests have been carried out in the metropolis since March 10 as part of the authorities' efforts to bring the situation under control.
Shanghai's 25 million residents[/B] remain under strict lockdown since late last month, with many complaining of supply problems, among other things.
The central government, on the one hand, remains adamant on implementing the "zero Covid-19" doctrine with an extended and draconian lockdown. At the same time, however, a deadline of Wednesday has been set to lift the severe restrictive measures, mainly for the sake of the economy, which has been severely and multifacetedly affected lately.
The ruling Communist Party has issued a circular with instructions to the local authorities on how to lift the measures. This involves stepping up controls and immediately transferring the sick to quarantine facilities.
With 45 cities across the country and 373 million people under strict confinement in some form of quarantine, China is once again under siege by Covid-19. Beyond the purely sanitary aspect, about 40% of the country's economic life has been brought to a partial or total halt. At the same time, the sad scenes of social chaos from Shanghai and other major cities in China, with clashes between citizens, police and health officials, confinement in quarantine camps, the forced removal of parents from children, etc., echo with absolute vividness the intransigence of the central government. The government appears determined to enforce, even by force, the universal and uncompromising application of its policy on Covid-19.[/B]
This insistence on 'zero tolerance[/B]' towards coronavirus has now become problematic, as it has ceased to produce the expected results. And, of course, it increasingly resembles the authoritarianism of a totalitarian regime. Most of all, it raises agonising questions throughout the rest of the world - or even within China: What is it that President Xi Jinping, along with his government staff, is aware of to order the implementation and enforcement of harsh restrictive measures without the slightest leniency? Is the version of the new coronavirus, which is dominant in China in the current period, not just one of the known variants of the O mutation[/B], but a much more dangerous, much more contagious form of Covid-19?
Suspicions that something very serious is behind the state-orchestrated hysteria in China are reinforced by a) the unjustifiable brutality of the actions against ordinary citizens and b) the government's choice to stick to its stifling lockdown tactics, despite the enormous problems that this kind of tactic is causing to the national economy of the country, with the catastrophic slowdown in primary production, the movement of goods, etc.So, consequently, the rest of the planet has reason to be very concerned about developments in China.
The most basic of these is obviously of a sanitary nature and has to do with the spread of a variant of the coronavirus which will be potentially worse than any previous one.[/B] If this is the case, then it is only a matter of time before the variant escapes outside China, as it did at the end of 2019, and drives almost all of humanity back into a vast quarantine, awakening memories of the original, nightmarish pandemic period. However, whether there is a Chinese "ghost mutation" or not, the impact of the lockdown there could dynamite the global economy - especially at a time when the war in Ukraine is causing large-scale disruptions in the supply chain and in a very wide range of sectors ranging from energy, fertilizers, raw materials for construction, to semiconductors and digital technology devices. In all these commodities, China is a market leader - and, indeed, with a universal reach of operations.
Without the vaccines of the West
Based on information from international organisations and the media, the current spike in Covid-19 cases is attributed to the 'Omicron' mutation of the new coronavirus, in particular the BA.2 variantThe surge in the number of sick people is more pronounced than anywhere else in Shanghai, a metropolis of 25 million which has been under a harsh lockdown for at least three weeks, which, in several cases, has triggered intense and mass popular discontent.
The extreme reactions of the Chinese state, at least at present, are not so much attributed to the danger of this type of Covid, but to the peculiarities of China, especially when it comes to containing the pandemic. For, on the one hand, the "zero Covid" policy in the past period has yielded spectacular results, limiting new infections to a few thousand cases, which is almost negligible compared to China's total population of 1.4 billion people. On the other hand, however, the import of Covid-19 vaccines from the West is prohibited by law in that country. The direct consequence of this measure is that only conventional biotechnology vaccines are available in China and not the advanced - and much more effective - mRNA-type vaccines, such as those from Pfizer, Moderna, etc.
According to leading Chinese epidemiologist, Zhong Nansan, "the country was not prepared for Omicron. The measures taken by local authorities to prevent or control the outbreak in Shanghai were not sufficient. Just as the understanding of the characteristics of the Omicron variant was not sufficient. Which has a very high transmissibility, causes relatively mild symptoms and similarly low mortality, compared to the Delta variant."
Despite the tight censorship implemented by the regime of Xi Jinping, there are Chinese scientists who question the effectiveness of the strict restrictive measures. They point out that the government is chasing the impractical, since PCR tests lack the required diagnostic accuracy, while at the same time the total closure of the border remains humanly impossible.
Leong Hoe Nam, an epidemiologist at one of Singapore's largest hospitals, comments that "the Chinese government is unimaginably inflexible. It is adamant about rationing Covid-19, but I personally believe this is a summer night's dream."
For its part, the government reiterates through its media mouthpieces that "in China there is no question of living with Covid, as most countries in the West do.[/B] Deaths will immediately multiply with the full release and lifting of restrictions."
Economy in intensive care
The Chinese government is trying to solve the complex, critical and pandemic-related problem head-on: How to combine the protection of public health with the normal functioning of the economy - especially an economy of the colossal size of a capitalist superpower like communist China. It was no coincidence, after all, that between 2018 and 2021 China experienced the highest economic growth of any country included in the G20, the club of the richest countries in the Mediterranean.
It is clear that the persistence of the extended, draconian lockdown is hitting economic life all round, which is reflected in key indicators such as those of goods traffic, which fell by 25% during the first week of April alone. In the previous month, new car sales, a figure that usually reflects the positive psychology of the consuming public, fell by a full 10 percentage points. At the same time, fears are being expressed about the prospect of a rapid rise in inflation
, even a devaluation of the national currency, a wave of disinvestment and, in general, everything else that the transition of a previously prosperous economy into a recessionary phase entails.
At the level of ordinary Chinese citizens, anxiety about the sufficiency of basic necessities, fear and insecurity about the future prevail. Understandably, when the Chinese place massive orders for extra refrigerators and freezers to maintain their food supplies - after raiding the supermarkets - they are in no mood to spend their money on anything other than the immediate necessities for their survival.
China's budget for 2022 predicted growth of 5.5%. However, as things stand, it is looking increasingly unlikely that this target will be met.
In an attempt to stimulate the market from above, the People's Bank of China has reduced the minimum reserve requirement, thereby releasing some $83 billion, ideally to be channelled through the financial sector into new lending.
Nevertheless, when the Chinese plutocracy in Shanghai is struggling to secure sufficient supplies for the, indefinite quarantine, and when Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province where millions of tons of coal are produced every year, is allowed in but not out, and when the industrial centre of Kunshan has had its public transport traffic disrupted, any talk of speeding up production to cover the shortages accumulated due to the pandemic from 2020 to the present is de facto meaningless.
A typical example of the direct negative impact of the Covid-19 backlash in China are the cases of industries such as Pegatron, the second largest iPhone assembly plant in the world, which is based in Shanghai. Currently, and in order to comply with the government measures, it has suspended operations until further notice.
The bans, however, are also strangling the agricultural sector, as the imposition of the restrictive measures coincides with the sowing season in the areas where most of China's agricultural products are produced.
In Jilin province, where crops account for 20% of China's total production, hundreds of thousands of farmers are stranded at home.At the same time, they are facing very serious fertilizer shortages,[/B] as a result of the same lockdown problems that are forcing their respective industries to shut down.
Similarly, dozens of multinational companies with production lines in China, such as the German auto parts manufacturer Bosch, which has shut down two of its giant factories. So the fact that, for example, the waiting time for a new car in Greece is approaching or even exceeding 1 year, is directly or indirectly related to how China perceives the containment of the new onslaught of the coronavirus.
Source: protothema.gr
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