Unlike Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, China seems determined to hold out
Since the early days of the covid-19 pandemic, China’s aim has been to eliminate the coronavirus entirely from within the mainland’s borders. Hong Kong and Macau have similar strategies. But even as the handful of other countries with “zero-covid” policies, including Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, move to relax them, China is holding out.
Such efforts have achieved impressive results, given the size of the country and the porousness, in normal times, of its land borders with some of its 14 neighbours. By October 10th China’s official tally of covid-related deaths stood at 4,636. Only three had occurred since April last year. Some provinces have seen no fatalities at all, including Jiangsu on the coast. It has a population of more than 80m, nearly as big as that of Germany where the official death toll is 94,000.
By September 15th China had given two jabs to nearly three-quarters of people over 60. But even if it succeeds in vaccinating almost all of them, as some countries in Europe have achieved, hospitalisations will still increase after the country starts opening up. By how much will depend on the jabs. China has approved seven vaccines, all of them produced by Chinese firms. The two most widely used are made by Sinovac, a private company, and Sinopharm, which is state-owned.
Might economic malaise force China’s hand? The country’s repeated skirmishes in recent months with Delta-related outbreaks have prompted sudden and severe lockdowns. Combined with a longer-running campaign against property speculation, these may have sent the economy into a “double-dip” contraction, according to Ting Lu of Nomura, a bank. He thinks China’sshrank by 0.2% in the three months from July to September , following a spectacular first dip when the pandemic struck .
Foreign businesspeople in China certainly grumble. One reason is that the government is reluctant to grant visas to spouses or children. An American who runs two businesses in China had a baby in America during the pandemic. He cannot return even though he and his wife have a visa. The total population of non-mainlanders in Beijing and Shanghai fell from about 316,000 a decade ago to just 226,800 last year, census data show.
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