I often hesitate to make claims about what is or isn’t going on in Mainland China.
At the risk of overstating the case, such claims, when made from the outside looking in, are a bit like speculating on North Korea. Sure, foreign media are allowed in Xi’s sprawling kingdom, but they’re hardly welcome, and Western tourists, to the extent they’re inclined to brave quarantine requirements for overseas travelers, do incur some risk of being kidnapped by the government, particularly in the unlucky event geopolitical developments take a turn for the adversarial.
Reporting on China by Western media outlets isn’t especially reliable due to ideological bias, and there’s no “reporting” by media outlets on the Mainland, because the media is just part of the Party’s propaganda apparatus. Government data is notoriously unreliable, and attempts to construct alternative datasets and metrics are complicated by the sheer vastness of the populace and inadequate access. Ultimately, articles about Mainland China are collections of i) anecdotes and observations gathered by reporters on the ground, ii) quotes from regular Chinese and business leaders who typically prefer not to give their full names for fear of reprisal, and iii) data of varying qualities.
All of that makes it difficult to assess the veracity of headlines like “China’s Streets More Deserted Than During Lockdowns, Data Shows.” There’s a very real sense in which streets are either deserted or they aren’t, and visuals from major Chinese cities suggest they are. Or at least that they were on a given street, at a given time, when a given photographer decided to take a picture. And therein lies the problem. This is a country of 1.4 billion, and to outside observers, sometimes it feels like every city is a large city.
The linked article cited an index compiled by BloombergNEF (which “leverages sophisticated data sets to create clear perspectives and in-depth forecasts”) based on traffic figures from Baidu. That’s as good a measure as any, I suppose. It’s an index of “congestion” (traffic congestion, not nasal) across 15 major Chinese cities, and it shows activity is now consistent with levels observed during the Lunar New Year period. If that’s accurate, the Party’s decision to lift “COVID zero” overnight has had the opposite of its intended effect, much as I (and many others) warned.
Chinese, despite taking to the streets to demand curbs be lifted, are apparently terrified of the virus or else of being unable to obtain adequate medical care should they become severely ill. The Party has dismantled the state-run quarantine system, so it’s not that people fear being held hostage in a facility. Rather, people appear to be scared of the pathogen itself, which is what happens when you spend three years cultivating fear despite advances in vaccines and therapeutics which, in rich nations, had the effect of downgrading COVID to a public health hazard to be wary of, but not something that should prevent healthy individuals from grabbing a sandwich with friends.
The public’s worry in China isn’t unfounded, though. Readers know the story: China hasn’t deployed an mRNA vaccine, insisting instead on traditional shots while developing domestic versions of the more advanced technology the Party refused to import. Germany this week sent 11,500 BioNTech doses to China. Initially, they’ll be administered to German expats and foreign nationals.
It’s impossible to assess the prevalence of severe disease because the government won’t disclose accurate figures, which means it’s hard to know whether China’s “giant wave” is more deadly, less deadly or about the same as similar waves experienced around the world over the past three years. WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he needs better information on disease severity, hospital admissions and ICU demand in order to comprehensively assess the situation.
Lacking the numbers, Chinese are understandably going by what they see which, according to pervasive anecdotal accounts, are overrun funeral parlors and hospitals at a breaking point. In Shanghai, medical facilities are in dire straits, consistent with similarly harrowing conditions in Beijing. Apparently, smaller cities are calling on retired healthcare workers to return to their posts to assist in the fight.
The economic tragedy in Shanghai is that the hit to activity from lifting COVID curbs may well exceed that from the draconian lockdown which gripped the city earlier this year. One local brave enough to speak on the record to Western media said “We are now repeating what we [went] through during the city lockdown: Lack of delivery capacity, no drugs, super-busy hospitals [and] kids being sent home.” Recall that Li Qiang, the Party boss who oversaw the Shanghai lockdown, is now in line to replace Li Keqiang as premier.
China continues to suggest that deaths are either low or nonexistent, a completely implausible claim. Funeral homes in Beijing are reportedly telling grieving loved ones that they can choose between waiting “days” to cremate dead relatives or pay a premium to expedite the service. Reuters reporters observed “a long line of hearses and workers in hazmat suits carrying the dead inside” at Beijing’s designated COVID crematorium, where “security guards were deployed at the entrance.” Some locals are resorting to what the linked article euphemistically described as “workarounds,” where that means putting their dead relatives in the backseat of the car and delivering them to funeral parlors.
According to London-based analytics firm Airfinity, China is likely seeing at least a million infections per day, and probably 5,000 or more daily deaths.
One private hospital in Shanghai estimated that nearly 5.5 million people are infected in the city, and that the number could rise to 12.5 million (so, half the population) by the end of the year. “In this tragic battle, the entire Greater Shanghai will fall, and we will infect all the staff of the hospital!” a WeChat post exclaimed. “We will infect the whole family! Our patients will all be infected! We have no choice, and we cannot escape.”
By Thursday afternoon, the post was removed. When Reuters reached someone at the hospital using the “main telephone line,” the person said they couldn’t comment.
That brings us full circle. It would help, immensely, if Xi’s government were more forthcoming so that Western media outlets wouldn’t be compelled to document the situation using anecdotes and first-hand observations from what certainly sounds like a chaotic, horrifically macabre national nightmare.
The CCP not only controls the Chinese population. The CCP controls not merely perception. As we saw with Covid lockdowns, the CCP believes it can control reality itself. Not unlike their Russian authoritarian cousins, they will fail.
Agree. You nailed it !
This is a damned if you do damned if you don’t situation. I’ve stated this before on this site, but the demographics of China (age and population density), along with obstinate lack of advance in vaccination (rate and type) and treatment made covid 0 a necessity. We’re finding out, anecdotally I suppose, why the party has been so stubborn in their refusal to relent.
The tragedy is not that there are covid deaths- that was inevitable. It is the scale of it- just like in the US, the black mark is not that there were deaths- but they should have been 50% less- that is the tragedy. The Chinese had over a year to prepare for this and had the benefit of learning from others- and did a lousy job after enduring years of draconian measures- in hindsight we can see it was for nothing.
It’d be so interesting to know what has transpired within the CCP. The pivot from zero-Covid to everyone-Covid seems hasty, chaotic, ill-planned, un-prepared. No stockpiling of drugs, no pre-vaccination program, no advance call-up of medical personnel, no organized messaging change to smooth the transition. This is unusual for Xi’s control-focused, centrally-directed government. What did Chinese health, security, economic officials tell Xi? Did anyone “lose their head”? How did Xi make his decisions?
My baseless conspiracy theory is that XI did this to undermine the more liberal voices. As in “Here you go. Take credit for what you unleased on your fellow citizens.” The protest leaders (of course the government knows names) would be the ones likely to lose their heads, after dutifully apologizing to the communist party for their actions.
Then he can swoop back in and reinstate Covid restrictions with little or no opposition.
mind blowing to me that CCP did not wait until Springtime to (publicly) lessen onerous restrictions…that’s a lot of unnecessary human sacrifice…
This complete mismanagement should open everyone’s eyes the same way that Russia’s debacle in Ukraine has. China is nowhere near a competent threat to the US’s global dominance. Authoritarian governments are never able to sustain growth and progress because their leadership will always make tragic mistakes due to their inherent hubris. China arrogantly assumed they could prevent a global pandemic in their country against all available evidence to dispute that. They arrogantly assumed they could create the mRNA vaccines that have proven most effective against Covid-19 without cooperating with western nations. Their arrogance will be their downfall.
This should make everyone who thinks China’s military could squash the US pause and consider what has that military actually ever accomplished? And despite the numbers and equipment, is this leadership capable of leading a strategically sound war effort? Or would Xi arrogantly assume victory before he even began the fight like Putin?
+1
I should have added that they always fail but never go away.
I don’t think it’s too big a stretch to imagine various regimes wouldn’t mind a little population-culling. If it can be blamed on a disease all the better.
Developed countries provide old-age pensions & medical benefits that could be ‘saved’, and non-developed countries that can never possibly meet the population’s needs might imagine a lessening of that burden, if only a few more of the old, tired, poor & hungry would just hurry up and move along…
Reportedly Chinese govt estimates:
– up to 248MM new Covid cases in Dec 1-20
– up to 37MM new cases/day now
Go big or go home!
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-23/china-estimates-covid-surge-is-infecting-37-million-people-a-day
Not new news, but official Chinese govt data on Covid infections is total fiction.
Some smaller cities are releasing their estimates, at least until they are silenced by the CCP.
Quingdao population 7MM, 0.50MM new Covid cases/day, which is 7% of pop. Donguan pop 10MM, 0.27MM, 3% of pop.
Astounding for 5% of a city’s population to be infected each day. Nothing like this was ever seen in the US or the other Western countries whose handling of Covid was derided by the CCP. China’s Covid wave(s) look to be faster and bigger.
The pandemic will soon take off in rural China, where healthcare resources are fewer and the population is higher risk (more elderly).
In the US, mortality during the Covid waves was affected by how overwhelmed the healthcare system was and thus what care both Covid and non-Covid patients received. If China’s already-marginal healthcare system is going to be more overwhelmed than in the West, China’s mortality rate is likely to be higher than one would otherwise expect.
A few weeks ago, I looked at Taiwan data and thought China would have up to 1MM deaths in its Covid reopening wave. I now think it is likely to be 2X, or more, higher.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3204489/covid-china-cities-offer-bleak-estimates-daily-infections
The Chinese experts who are talking to media seem to be expecting the vast majority of the population to be infected by the end of January, when the current virus wave is expected to peak.
In the US, the peaks and troughs of the Covid waves had some investment significance, as I recall. Likely so in China as well.
The effects of Covid on the US workforce has had some investment significance as well. It would be interesting to estimate the possible effect on the Chinese workforce, from Covid deaths plus disabling long Covid.