Forget Taiwan for a little while. This is the hot issue in China. Zero Covid could break the economy and us in turn.

Weekend Barrons.

Tens of millions of people are under mandatory home confinement in China as a new Covid epidemic spreads throughout the country. An untold number of others have been forced into isolation centers under Xi Jinping’s zero-Covid mandate. This rigid, one-size-fits-all policy is based entirely on political dictate and has caused severe, unnecessary food shortages and financial insecurity for those forced to stay at home.

Fears of instability are on the rise, not only about public health, but also domestic economic growth. If this crisis continues into the late summer even Xi’s coronation to an unprecedented third term could be at risk.

So far, the plan to lock down entire cities has shown no sign of easing even as unverified reports of starvation spread on social media. People cannot go out to shop for food, and deliveries are often hard to come by. This type of centralized control was a disaster for China’s government-mandated production of grain, steel, and cement in the early years of economic development. It is even less suited to a modern China.

There appears to be no way out of this all-or-nothing approach. Xi has concentrated power on himself, and away from the Politburo Standing Committee that gave China at least some policy flexibility in the past.

While government slogans admonish people to accept adversity, that’s cold comfort to those who test positive (false or real) and are forced into medical mass incarceration.

Pictures and running commentary of unsanitary holding facilities have flooded popular Chinese messaging app WeChat . Those forced to shelter-in-place with dwindling finances, food, and medicine are not happy to “eat bitterness” either, as the Chinese saying goes.

local oaf says:
April 30, 2022 at 6:51 pm

Bob Brown

naaa, he’s out of the limelight now.

naaa, he’s out of the limelight now.

Yeah, I was confused – I was voting for first president of Fitzsimian’s “republic” 🙂

Second best.
Tony Abbott.

Perhaps we should single out Snowcone for this effort –
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EQV8yIjCn4U

Daily Mail cites Paul Keating as coming to Perth to help Albo launch his campaign. Haven’t been to a good tarring and feathering for some years…

This is the skank the scum bag biden has put in charge of the new Orwell disinformation bureau.

You get a maximum of two votes – your first choice (and your second, if you could be bothered).

Bruce Pascoe, second vote Kevin Rudd.

My second vote is bandanaman.
He screams wanker.

Geoffrey Robertson gets points for taking Kathy Lette of our hands, albeit temporarily. He should get a knighthood if he hooks up with Jane Caro.

My second vote goes to Pascoe 🙂

My second vote goes to Pascoe ?

I’ve heard the withering contempt of “fullblood” Aborigines, to “Faux” Aborigines – educational to say the least. How Pascoe escapes such criticism, I don’t know.

Fitzsimons (for biggest wanker, or whatever we’re voting on)

Sal – your (late) vote puts the FitzSimians on 3.5, second (or third, if you want to be pedantic).

Thank Rabz.
However I believe Fitzsimons is actually in the lead, or will be when 900 mail-in ballots arrive on Tuesday.

Numbers Bob is over on Quadrant Online, talking about – surprise, surprise – the Vietnam war.

My vote for inclusion in Oz’s most ridiculous people;

“Senator” Jordan Steele-John.

On reflection, the vote could have gone to any one of the total shit-fer-brains that are the Parliamentary Greens.

Interesting piece on China. If it’s six months away they aren’t going to make it. The Aussie could end up in the low 60s looking for breath. I don’t think Zee is going to back away either.

Zero Covid Is Breaking China

Health workers wearing personal protective equipment walk along a street during a Covid-19 lockdown in the Jing’an district in Shanghai on April 27, 2022.

About the author: Brian P. Klein is the founder of RidgePoint Global, a strategic advisory firm, and a former U.S. diplomat.

Tens of millions of people are under mandatory home confinement in China as a new Covid epidemic spreads throughout the country. An untold number of others have been forced into isolation centers under Xi Jinping’s zero-Covid mandate. This rigid, one-size-fits-all policy is based entirely on political dictate and has caused severe, unnecessary food shortages and financial insecurity for those forced to stay at home.

Fears of instability are on the rise, not only about public health, but also domestic economic growth. If this crisis continues into the late summer even Xi’s coronation to an unprecedented third term could be at risk.

So far, the plan to lock down entire cities has shown no sign of easing even as unverified reports of starvation spread on social media. People cannot go out to shop for food, and deliveries are often hard to come by. This type of centralized control was a disaster for China’s government-mandated production of grain, steel, and cement in the early years of economic development. It is even less suited to a modern China.

There appears to be no way out of this all-or-nothing approach. Xi has concentrated power on himself, and away from the Politburo Standing Committee that gave China at least some policy flexibility in the past.

While government slogans admonish people to accept adversity, that’s cold comfort to those who test positive (false or real) and are forced into medical mass incarceration.

Pictures and running commentary of unsanitary holding facilities have flooded popular Chinese messaging app WeChat . Those forced to shelter-in-place with dwindling finances, food, and medicine are not happy to “eat bitterness” either, as the Chinese saying goes.

A rare resistance, both online and in real life, has formed, testing China’s censors and local police forces called out to maintain order. People are seeing their government in a new light, not as a purveyor of endless upward mobility, but of a harshness and rigidity that brooks little compromise.

Not since Mao’s mass campaign to rid the country of sparrows that were damaging crops has Chinese society been so affected by government dictate on such a large scale. That political campaign led to an insect infestation, agricultural collapse, and mass starvation instead.

In one widely circulated Chinese audio recording that has since been blocked on WeChat, a man is heard speaking to a healthcare professional. He keeps repeating that his father’s app showed negative test results, but health officials say there was a positive reading. That means his father would be sent to a converted warehouse with questionable medical facilities. In the end the healthcare worker says the man should refuse anyone trying to take his father away unless they can prove the positive Covid result.

While this may be a tiny act of personal rebellion, larger groups have formed to boycott testing in their apartment complexes over fears that they are being exposed when they gather. This is one of the only credible explanations for how people can still test positive after a month of near-total isolation. In some cases medical workers won’t even do the testing anymore, requiring residents to test each other instead. Any infection resets the entire building’s quarantine for another fourteen days.

The striking absence of preparation for a food and medical crisis has shaken some Chinese residents’ view that China had beaten Covid with a system far superior to the rest of the world. Centralized control that had directed economic growth and maintained the country’s top-down leadership structure for decades is now under a critical spotlight.

That extends to the economic consequences of a mass immobilization of the general population.

For nearly a month, Shanghai, with a population of 25 million people, has been effectively closed. Cargo ships are backed up at sea, container trucks can’t load, and warehouses there and in the nearby port of Qingdao are filling to capacity. New shipments will soon have no place to go. The longer people are forced into confinement, the worse the cascading effects will become.

Even the political capital of Beijing is now facing panic-buying and mandatory testing. Lockdowns are likely to spread throughout the city as infections gather speed. The surge is driving fears that new variants will evolve. One global lesson learned is that the virus can mutate faster than the political will to ignore or control it.

China’s economic forecasts have already been revised downward, though the updates don’t seem to fully appreciate the depth of the coming problems and the inadequacy of current policies to address them. The International Monetary Fund has lowered its estimate by nearly a percentage point to 4.8% growth for 2022. Investment banks are even less optimistic with a median annual growth rate of just 4.5% versus the official Chinese government target of 5.5%.

Slow growth is politically dangerous for China’s leaders. Xi recently announced a new burst of infrastructure spending, though how construction workers can build without spreading the virus remains unclear. That and his admonishment to prove political supremacy by beating U.S. growth this year is neither a sound health policy nor a high bar for success (the U.S. is only expected to clock in around 3% for 2022.) Confidence in the government’s stimulus is also waning. The Shanghai Composite Index is down nearly 8% since the People’s Bank of China announced lower bank reserve requirements to support the economy in mid-April.

Whether this health and economic crisis puts enough political pressure on Xi to change his policy is an open question. He needs stability and continued economic prosperity to cement his leadership for a third term in office this fall. So far he has neither.

Instead of addressing the shortcomings of the zero-Covid policy, offering rent assistance and massive funding for food deliveries, for example, the leadership seems content to let the situation largely run its course. That leaves individuals dependent on coordinating with their neighbors when possible just to have enough to eat.

By some estimates, China is at least six months away from being able to sustain a looser Covid policy. That would include a high enough vaccination rate and drug supplies to treat the infected. Importing mRNA vaccines from abroad would certainly help, though that would be interpreted as a political blow to the widely touted, and increasingly discredited, home-grown Chinese vaccines.

Flexibility has been the hallmark of the Chinese government since Deng Xiaoping’s reform and opening period of the 1980’s. That enabled the country to eventually grow into the second largest economy in the world and to become a top trading nation.

A similar flexibility is needed to meet this expanding health crisis. The sooner the better.

John H, many thanks for the links and info you posted at 2:33 pm.

I kept looking further down thread, but finally found them about 8 hours later. 🙂

Medusa Touch! Natural Gas UP 192% Under Biden, Diesel UP 176%, Regular Gasoline UP 74%, Foodstuffs UP 59% (Thanks Biden And Federal Reserve!)

Ron DeSantis Leads Republican Charge Against Biden Regime’s ‘Ministry of Truth’

Woke Economics Makes Everyone Broke