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Illustration by Jaewoogy.com

After more than two months of living under “zero-COVID” measures, the Chinese city of Shanghai has announced plans for lifting its lockdown in June. But residents of Shanghai and other major cities in China are poised to face even longer lines as they wait to undergo polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing for the virus.

Having announced their intent to carry on with the “zero-COVID” approach, Chinese authorities are working to set up testing stations within “15 minutes’ walking distance” in every major city.

Under this plan, residents in every city would be required to undergo testing anywhere from every day to every two to three days and present a negative COVID-19 result to be able to go about everyday activities such as attending school or work, dining out, and shopping. Over 9,900 testing centers have already been set up in the city of Shanghai alone.

With lockdowns and PCR testing now part of daily life in China, an enormous amount of money is being spent on the tests. Soochow Securities estimated that around 1.7 trillion yuan — roughly 1.5% of China’s gross domestic product — has been spent on everyday PCR testing in around 30 major Chinese cities over the past year. While tests are free for the public, they’re costing an astronomical amount in terms of the government’s budget.

In the early stages of the pandemic in 2020, testing costs ran to some 350 yuan apiece; these days, that’s down to around 20 yuan. But the huge rise in the number of tests has translated into soaring profits for around two dozen companies involved in the PCR tests.

The Economist has said that first-quarter net profits for Dian Diagnostics were up by more than 120% from the same period last year, while first-quarter profits for Hybribio Biotech rose by roughly 200%.

A structure has taken shape in which the “zero-COVID industrial complex” has seen its profits skyrocket even as ordinary Chinese people face deepening woes, with the April rates of increase in retail sales and industrial production standing respectively at -11.1% and -2.9% and unemployment rising to 6.1% amid the lockdown measures.

According to reports, infectious disease expert Zhong Nanshan, who has been directing China’s COVID-19 response, has earned huge profits with his shares in Yiling Pharmaceutical — which makes a traditional medication touted as a treatment for the disease — and the PCR testing company Kingmed.

The World Health Organization has publicly expressed concerns about China’s zero-COVID policies which it has referred to as “unsustainable.”

In anonymous interviews with the global medical journal The Lancet, Chinese local officials maintained that the zero-COVID lockdown policies were more harmful than the virus itself, and that many people had begun asking serious questions about the effectiveness of deterring the virus’s spread. At Peking University, students held a demonstration on Sunday evening protesting the school’s push to build a wall around dormitories to restrict students’ access.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who described the rapid spread of COVID-19 as the “greatest turmoil” to befall North Korea since its foundation, said on May 14 that it would be “good to actively learn from the advanced and rich anti-epidemic successes and experience already gained by the Chinese [Communist] party and people.”

His message reads as a signal that North Korea hopes to receive support from China while saving face for President Xi Jinping.

But the real lesson of China’s experience is that politicized disease control practices, which place too much emphasis on the regime’s “face” and “track record,” are incapable of stopping the Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus, even as they force tremendous suffering and massive costs on society as a whole.

In disease control, there are no “victories” or “defeats.” North Korea needs to focus on humanitarian principles and accept the hands that South Korea and the international community are reaching out in support.

By Park Min-hee, editorial writer

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