The January 19 issue of Beijing Review contains a retrospective on the Chinese experience with, and response to, Covid-19.
On January 23, 2020, the day before Chinese New Year, the decision was made to take strong measures against the spread of the new disease in Wuhan, a major transit hub. The city was closed off from the rest of the country, transportation was shut down, and the 12 million residents affected had months of restrictive measures until the lockdown was lifted on April 8, less than three months after it began. On May 22, China reported that it had successfully brought the number of domestic infections down to zero.
Until the emergence of Omicron in 2022, author Liang Xiao writes, “the vast majority of Chinese did not experience lockdowns or mass nucleic acid testing.”
Other nations also adopted a zero-Covid policy, at least until Delta: Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea, for example.
The vast majority of Chinese had little chance of encountering the virus until the decision taken earlier this month to adjust Covid policies.
One effect is the change in life expectancy. In 2019, China’s reported life expectancy was 77.3, a figure that increased to 78.2 in 2022, as life expectancy declined in many countries, including the United States, where it plunged from 78.8 to 76.4 over the same period. (It remains to be seen how China’s life expectancy will change this year.)
Meanwhile, China actually saw GDP growth in 2020, and a very high growth rate of 8.4% in 2021.
In 2022, Omicron was more difficult to control, and Shanghai’s 25,000,000 people underwent daily testing to control the outbreak there until measures were ended on June 1.
The change in China’s policy was not made suddenly, or in response to Western complaints, the author says. Rather, the increased infectiousness of Omicron, coupled with its lower pathogenicity, along with the 90% full-vaccination rate in China, including 85% of those over 60 and 65% of those over 80, and along with new treatments and years of experience, made a downgrading in Covid-19 policy the reasonable approach.
The January 8 shift in policy was two weeks before the start of the Chinese New Year, allowing the peak to be reached or surpassed in some cities by the conclusion of the festivities.
