Why China is moving carefully away from zero-Covid, with or without the protests

An ill-timed relaxation could trigger mass deaths, a recession and set back gains in poverty, health care and education
Add to the considerations youth demands for freedoms, China’s easing is necessarily slow and measured

Lub Bun Chong

Published: 1:00am, 17 Dec 2022

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Politicians and the media in polarised US put their differences aside and threw their support behind the zero-Covid protesters in China. CNN proclaimed: “Protests erupt across China in unprecedented challenge to Xi Jinping’s zero-Covid policy”. Fox News shouted: “BEIJING BACKS DOWN: Chinese citizens ‘empowered’ after Covid protests, China researcher says”.

The zero-Covid protests are a contributory factor to China’s decision to relax its measures, but the Western media portrayal is an oversimplification. The actual situation is a cauldron of risks that threatens to boil over.

China’s handling of Covid-19 is fraught with complexities and intricacies matched by few other countries. The policy is drawn up in Beijing but executed across more than 660,000 communities and villages. This is further complicated by a rural population of more than 500 million – the US rural population is only around a tenth of that.

China may be the world’s second largest economy, but its healthcare system pales against that of the US, where health expenditure per capita is almost US$11,000, vs less than US$600 for China, according to 2019 World Bank data.

Crucially, China’s zero-Covid policy requires political will and deftness to juggle a plethora of rights and freedoms. The West has focused on protesters’ individual rights, and rightfully so. But Chinese people’s collective rights are also an indispensable consideration; this is the political reality.

The United Nations recognises 30 “universal” rights and freedoms. China’s imperative is to find an equilibrium based on Chinese history and circumstances, not American ones.

China is at a tricky crossroads where its social contract is undergoing a paradigm shift. Its populace is among the world’s most digitally connected, but is also one of the oldest continuous living civilisations. The zero-Covid protests are a case in point.

The young protesters may only number in the thousands, but their campaign for freedom of movement, right to justice and rights of expression, should not be taken lightly. The youth are an important stakeholder, and this is not lost on the Chinese leadership.

Most analysts still expect China to become the world’s largest economy. It’s useful to note that the governance system driving this development is the latest manifestation of a system dating back thousands of years; it always featured a strong central authority.

China’s “authoritarian” system is not without contention, but it has survived the test of time, and this is predicated on its ability to change and deliver to its people. Among China’s earliest classic literature is the I Ching, or Book of Change, and this continues to guide Chinese leadership. China should not be viewed just as a nation, but also as a civilisation.

03:34

‘Not afraid’: the Chinese painter in Italy posting videos from China’s Covid protests on Twitter

The United States, a younger nation, forged a system based on its unique history and circumstances, which, at the risk of stating the obvious, is different from China’s. But like China’s, it is not without contention.

The US and most of the world starting easing Covid-19 restrictions in early 2022. The virus is the same, but the circumstances are different. China has a low vaccination rate among its elderly and is still without its own approved mRNA vaccine, and so opted for caution and vigilance. The risk of a long-term fallout from a massive outbreak must be balanced against short-term lockdown costs.

China has kept the pandemic “manageable” with 10 million infections and 31,000 fatalities, but this has come with a cost as the areas under lockdown accounted for some 20 per cent of its economy. The net cost-benefit effect, together with other economic headwinds, will contribute to an economic growth of around 3 per cent, well below the target of 5.5 per cent.

China’s path to reopening will be neither quick nor smooth

For China, an ill-timed relaxation would risk an outbreak similar in scale to that of the US, which has 10 times as many infections and 34 times the fatalities. At this scale, the pandemic load factor would push China’s economic growth this year well below 3 per cent, or worse, trigger a recession.

China took more than 40 years to achieve certain rights and freedoms for the vast majority of its people, and these include freedom from poverty, and the right to basic health, food and education. Accepted norms for many, but a quantum leap for ordinary Chinese.

01:45

Patients in China hooked up to IV drips in their own cars as clinics are full

China is still a developing nation with many challenges and its work is far from done. It wasn’t long ago that 800 million people lived below the poverty line, without basic healthcare. The Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution are not distant memories, but reminders of the sacrifices and fragility of today’s achievements.

China’s achievements brought prosperity but also economic inequality – which, according to 2021 Democracy Perception Index, is the world’s “biggest perceived threat to democracy”. China’s “common prosperity” seeks to achieve freedom from economic inequality.

China’s Covid-19 policy, zero or otherwise, has far-reaching consequences on the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” and the “Chinese dream”. These are not empty slogans, but objectives with a real and long-lasting impact on the livelihoods, freedoms and rights of ordinary Chinese long after Covid-19.

The stakes for China’s Covid-19 policy are high, and any misstep risks turning the clock back for 1.4 billion people. China will take measured steps, not a V-shaped bounce, to “nurse” its way back to a “healthy” economic growth of around 5 per cent per year.

Lub Bun Chong is a partner of C Consultancy and Helios Strategic Advisors, and the author of “Managing a Chinese Partner: Insights From Four Global Companies”