hankyoreh

Choi Hyun-june

Now as well as in the past, China reacts to crises by blocking them off. China built the Great Wall upon being invaded from the north, and it blocked off the internet when its competition with the US intensified. In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, China has once again been barring the movement of hundreds of millions of its residents for months at a time. China is not in the least bit concerned about sacrificing the individual freedom of countless people because societal safety comes first, which gives you a sense of what socialism is really like.

The lockdown of Shanghai that began in late March is ongoing. Though the surreal ban on going outside imposed on 25 million Shanghai residents has remained in place, the city is still recording 10,000 new cases of COVID-19 each and every day. The situation calls for an even stronger lockdown rather than the easing of disease control measures according to China’s “zero-COVID” disease control policy that justifies the blockade of an entire city for a couple of dozen positive cases.

China seems ready to risk economic sacrifices as well. Though economic growth is bottoming out and there are no signs that employment will recover, there’s no indication that China will end its lockdown. The country seems confident that discontent stemming from lockdowns won’t lead to social unrest as it prepares to lock down Beijing, where COVID-19 has been spreading rapidly.

The “mild but fast” Omicron variant, which emerged in November of last year, changed the game in the US and Europe as well as in countries that had been maintaining stringent disease control measures, such as South Korea and Taiwan. Thanks to high vaccination rates, the fatality rate of Omicron dropped significantly, and many countries opted for a policy of coexistence with COVID-19, one that said, “Let’s catch COVID so we can move on.” Realistic difficulties of imposing strict lockdowns in the third year of the pandemic, when people had finally become too exhausted with their new reality, influenced that decision as well.

China is the lone exception. Despite the Omicron variant, Chinese authorities are maintaining their zero-COVID stance without a second thought. The People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, and Xinhua News Agency, the official state press agency of China, publish articles and editorials defending and promoting China’s zero-COVID stance every day. They argue that “living with COVID” — the policy direction the US, Europe, South Korea, and others have chosen — is an irresponsible one that makes light of the lives of the public, while imposing strict lockdowns is ultimately an excellent policy that generates a larger economic effect with less cost.

This attitude derives from China’s past experiences of triumph and present anxieties. Based on numbers alone, China has won the fight against COVID-19 throughout the past two years. With a population of 1.4 billion, which accounts for 20% of the world’s population, China has only seen 237,038 cumulative total cases of COVID-19 as of April 1 — a day on which South Korea recorded 264,171 news cases in a single day.

Similarly, China’s COVID-19 death toll as of April 1 was 4,638, having increased by six cases since April 2020. Though some suspect that the statistics have been rigged, it’s still clear that China has successfully controlled the COVID-19 virus for quite some time. The country believes Omicron can be quelled by similar measures.

It’s not like China can switch courses even if it wants to. The country vaccinated its population with an independently developed vaccine, which is far less effective than mRNA vaccines like that of Pfizer and Moderna. The country doesn’t have enough hospitals, and regional disparities are huge. If China chooses to coexist with COVID, some project that the country will face millions of deaths — a worse disaster than what any other country has experienced. As China has publicized its successful disease control track record as its greatest achievement, there’s zero chance that it will give up on its zero-COVID regime half a year out from President Xi Jinping’s bid for a third consecutive term.

Six deaths in two years. It’s a number that symbolizes China’s perfect disease control policy, but it’s also a number that’s putting extra pressure on China to not misstep. Can humans gain absolute control over viruses? China continues to attempt the impossible.

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