Crossing the River, redux
the COVID mess in the Middle Kingdom
Today’s China news indicates some changes in the zero-COVID policies. Testing requirements appear lessening and a bit of freedom to move across the country is beginning. The Party leadership seems to acknowledge the link between unsustainable mandates and the proliferation of protests over the past ten days.
Now what?
The Wall Street Journal offered a report yesterday supporting my argument that this is a regime that ‘crosses the river by feeling the stones’ rather than one of unimpeccable, unmoveable strategic planners. Liyan Qi and Rafaelle Huang reported that China’s medical spending to handle infrastructure on pandemic disease decreased during COVID while the government diverted funds to virus testing and implementing control over people’s movements through constant monitoring. Vaccinations remain shockingly low for a the country where the outbreak first surfaced in Wuhan fully three years ago. 'China Missed a Window to Be Better Prepared for Covid-19 Surge', WSJ.com, 1 December 2022
Based on the past thirty-six months, we have evidence that COVID infections are likely to increase substantially as China reopens, if even gradually, as has occurred elsewhere; people have neither the immunity to the virus nor vaccinations to minimise its effects. The Chinese vaccines, exported as part of ‘vaccine diplomacy’ to poor countries as part of Xi Jinping’s pet Belt & Road Initiative, are not effective. China will, as the Journal pointed out, confront an even greater increase in cases than has been true over the past month. (I do not pretend to be a virologist but this strikes me as a major lesson we see from the experiences elsewhere in the world and from what I read by scientists who do know how this works.)
China’s fixation with zero-COVID always struck me as part of Xi Jinping’s decade-long public messaging about the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) control over society and the futility of doubting that control. As I noted on 8 November in ‘Flawed Assumptions?’, Xi has an obsession with strength presumably to preclude challenges to Party’s and his personal rule.
The zero-COVID policies supported—as will those that remain as this unfolds—a government bullying its people because of profound insecurity because it fears, given the chance, those same citizens would reject its rule. Bullies are always fearful, no matter how they abuse others; they fear their weaknesses will become clear. Bullies aim to coerce others rather than either to incentivise or lead since both of those latter ways require a give-and-take or discussion or something else that could change in who gets to decide.
Chinese leaders have said for decades that the Party must and will continue in control of the country. This is a Marxist-Lenininst leadership which believes itself the vanguard for China. The idea at the heart of the Party’s self-image and messaging to those it rules. Xi has said it multiple times. He reminds the People’s Liberation Army regularly that they are subject to CCP control as a Party army instead of a national army; the needs of the CCP will always take precedence over anything else. I don’t think this is hyperbole; it is the most basic tenet of this Party.
The unexpected protests spilling into public across China since mid-November forced the Party to change its tactics but not to change its overall demand that the nation will acquiesce to CCP rule.
China’s leaders have decided the immediate, most threatening challenge for them are the protests to their rule rather than the spread of the virus. In a common behaviour, they are kicking the can down the road about the virus probably in hopes something else overtakes the threat in the public eye. That could happen or it might not; neither we nor the CCP government knows but I trust science over the CCP. In a country with 1.3 billion people, the overwhelming majority of them have not yet suffered the infection yet. As U.S. infectious disease specialist Dr. Michael Osterholm said in August 2021, COVID finds people and they are better off when vaccinated then not. "'Ultimately this virus will find you': Dr. Osterholm pushes Covid vaccine as Delta vairiant spreads', CBS Minnesota, 7 August 2021,
The leadership does know that thousands of students, as Xi pointed out in a discussion earlier this week, reject the current draconian restrictions on their lives; he doesn’t seem to realise others also abjure the restrictions. More relevant, those calls for the removal of the CCP and Xi himself frightens the Party leaders. Anyone of the demanding another other form of rule in the country is a red line. Moving the country back from that red line before too many people approach it is vital to ensuring that Xi’s rule remain in tact and that the Party retain its supreme power in society. The risks are too great to ignore these voices which could expand.
The regime engages in despicable behaviour but it would prefer to revise policies at this point rather than mow down students as it did in 1989. China’s culture most often prefers to assure societal harmony over luan, or chaos in a country so vast with so many differences. This vast place which is just plain hard to govern period. My personal view is that I don’t think the leaders seek to use force as their first line of action, though I realise many differ with me on that. I think the Party prefers the self-congratulatory view they govern quite well and these periodic bumps along the road can be managed if they are dealt with firmly.
The lowering of zero-COVID restraints will accompany the deployment of police and the visits by internet police to remind protesters of the Party’s ability to monitor their phones. These offer the Party the hope of lowering the political temperature in China but if they don’t terminate the protests, the CCP will swing to new steps. This are actions much as those of a hiker who encounters a river she must cross. She does not know how deep the river is or where the stones are that she must step on; she doesn’t know how much algae are on the stones. She takes a step to see whether she can keep her balance before she takes the next step. She knows where the other bank of the river is but she is not really sure she can get there without falling hard into the swift, cold water. She will attempt to cross the river by feeling the stones, hoping to do so successfully. At the same time, she is mindful she may well fall, losing everything in her pack. FIN
