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Smart Development

Salir de la política de COVID cero no es fácil

Nov 28, 2022 S. Alex Yang and Angela Huyue Zhang

HONG KONG – Después de un incendio que se cobró varias víctimas en un edificio residencial en la región china de Xinjiang (hecho por el que muchos culpan a las cuarentenas por la COVID‑19), manifestantes han salido a las calles chinas para exigir un final a las estrictas restricciones. Ya antes del estallido de las protestas, hubo señales de que el gobierno del presidente Xi Jinping se preparaba para revertir la costosa política de COVID cero, aunque el cronograma exacto sigue siendo incierto. Pero el proceso será más complicado de lo que muchos piensan.

La salida de la COVID cero conlleva claros riesgos de salud pública que hay que manejar, sobre todo en vista de las bajas tasas de vacunación entre la población anciana. Pero hay otro factor menos apreciado: las dificultades operativas del proceso.

Como aprendió China de la penosa experiencia de Hong Kong, una ola de contagios en un área densamente poblada puede crear un incremento repentino de la demanda de recursos médicos y paralizar el sistema de salud pública. Si el gobierno no encuentra un modo rápido de satisfacer esa demanda, se puede disparar la cifra de muertes, sobre todo entre los ancianos.

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S. Alex Yang

Writing for PS since 2022
1 Commentary

S. Alex Yang is Associate Professor of Management Science and Operations at London Business School.

Angela Huyue Zhang

Writing for PS since 2021
11 Commentaries

Angela Huyue Zhang, Global Professor of Law at New York University, is Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Philip K. H. Center for Chinese Law at the University of Hong Kong and the author of the forthcoming High Wire: How China Regulates Big Tech and Governs its Economy (Oxford University Press, 2024).

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peter yeoh Dec 5, 2022

This is a very perceptive and thoughtful analysis of the phenomenon highlighted here. Is it also more likely that 'ego' and 'pride' of the leadership shaped this kind of policy responses. This would have been prolonged, if not for the efforts of domestic voices gone a little bit stronger and brave, and some 'nudging' from domestic social media and global traditional media. For the kind of policy responses that for example that the WHO and others seek, quite likely more thoughtful tactical initiatives would have to be framed. For instance, while Western-designed vaccines are said to be relatively more effective than those in China, the leadership is unwilling to adopt these to complement those currently being used. Surely a way can be found to get Chinese leadership embrace vaccines developed elsewhere that can be more acceptable to them.
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vic lai Nov 29, 2022

It's lately reported that the Chinese authority
(i) has been transporting security soldiers and armoured soldier-sending vehicles to both Shanghai and Wuhan, to help cope with the future protests there, and
(ii) is demanding Apple's ios 16.1 to delete her use of AirDrop in China.
The AirDrop function of Apple's iphones had widely been used in Hong Kong's "dark" color-revolution in 2019, facilitating the angry young people in that city to share videos, photos, contacts, and articles very easily with each other.
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It seems the Chinese authority wants to quickly and completely stop the further spreading of the perhaps-foreign-country-instigated "white" color-revolution in the major cities of the country at all costs, which was obviously prompted by the non-stop and too-strict lockdown Covid policies in the country.
This time's student protests in China, probably goaded by some organised foreign power, also resemble the Tiananmen student protests in Beijing in 1989.
Without a peaceful domestic environment in the country, China's further economic and geopolitical developmental ambitions in the future will all be in vain.
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- vic lai Nov 29, 2022
  
  (i) Considering the still-quite-low and hence unsatisfactory average vaccination rate especially for the Chinese people aged 65 or above, China's young university students should fully realize that their coming restored "freedom," if eventually realized, will come at the tragic sacrifice of a much higher total death toll of the old people in the country than currently with strict lockdown controls everywhere in the country.
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  (ii) Having received the persistent and rather strict affected-area lockdown orders from the highest authority in Beijing, many of China's local authorities subsequently massively upgrade the original lockdown requirements set by Beijing by many folds, so that
  (a) hopefully zero or very low death toll rates in their governed area will be recorded and hence they won't be blamed by their higher authority in the subsequent periods and lose their government jobs as a result, and
  (b) those responsible local government officials will later even be praised and promoted by their higher authority in Beijing.
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  (iii) It's lately and widely reported that some non-public vaccination SMEs kept manufacturing many fake Covid-positive reports for the testing households in their regions, in order to obtain more and more government vaccination subsidies.
  They strive unethically to quickly get rich during their country's economically-suicidal-like and seemingly-non-stop lockdown period.
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  - vic lai Nov 29, 2022
    
    The sudden and massive propping up of many new Covid-testing laboratories in China in the past 3 years should have been accompanied by many corrupt collusions between high-ranking government officials and their backed-up private businessmen or relatives (many of whose highly profitable businesses are now being listed in China's stock exchanges) in the country.
    It's always been in their best interest to prolong the strict lockdown policies and Covid testing in the country for as long a period of time as possible, during which the lockdown policies keep generating and sustaining lots of highly-profitable PPP-like businesses in China.
    It's just like many of today's American defence contractors who never want the ongoing Ukraine War to stop any time soon in Europe, even though this means Ukraine may eventually degenerate into a medieval European country sometime in the future.
    So much for the West's current highly-praised trend of privatization.
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    In the past, President Xi would probably have utilised such a golden opportunity to further arrest and prosecute the rest of his numerous enemy top officials in the country who are suspected of corruptly exploiting the Chinese people in the street through the PPP-like Covid-testing businesses just mentioned.
    But today, with almost all of his deadly enemy top politicians in China mostly gone (or so I think), he may not easily further taper too quickly the country's too-strict Covid lockdown policies in the near future, especially if he is now fiercely suspecting that a brand-new foreign-country-instigated white Color Revolution is going to precariously unfold eventually in his own country.
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    - vic lai Nov 29, 2022
      
      China's "White Color Revolution" lately stops as suddenly as it started a few days ago, resulting in the massive gains in the stock exchanges of both Shanghai and Hong Kong today.
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      It's said by a Chinese China watcher that the latest contemporaneous and well-connected student protests suddenly cropping up in many major cities of China could be effectively organized not by the foreigners, but only by one of the country's many CCP cliques, and this time the suspect is said to be China's "Communist Youth League," to which former top Beijing politicians like outgoing Premier Li Keqiang and former President Hu Jintao belong.
      After the latest political-power-resharing between President Xi and the Communist Youth League is finished, the protesting university students quickly went back to their campuses in their own cities.
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