If, in some parallel universe, China were allowed to vote on the "covid zero policy", the side of "change course" would gain ground. In its fight against the new variants of covid-19 in the face of the foreseeable winter increase in infections, authorities have imposed partial lockdowns in cities from Xining in the west to Fuzhou in the south, restaurants have closed, classes have gone in-person, access to grocery stores has been limited, and millions of people they have been subjected to some form of isolation, many of them for the second or third time.
"Closed loop" policies, which lock factory workers into production centers and gated residences, have also come under public criticism. Social media has shown videos of workers climbing fences and fleeing on foot along busy highways to escape the virus outbreak at the world's largest iPhone factory, operated near the central city of Zhengzhou by Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn. Amid protests from Chinese netizens, Foxconn offered bonuses to workers who stayed at their jobs. Zhengzhou authorities have declared that the latest variants of covid are mild and not to be feared.
Unfortunately, such guarantees are at odds with the gloomy atmosphere of war that grips other regions of China. Mobile images of pandemic guards clad in white protective suits hitting citizens who defy controls to go buy food or medicine for their families have gone viral. The guards have also prevented the seriously ill from accessing hospitals. A young boy died of carbon monoxide poisoning in the northwestern city of Lanzhou after being held up at quarantine checkpoints.
Censors have better luck filtering out bad news from remote regions. Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, confined for three months, has been the scene of unusual street protests. Xinjiang, a heavily policed northwestern region, has been battling an outbreak since the summer that has left residents hungry and desperate. Both areas are effectively closed to foreigners and departures from Xinjiang have been banned since the beginning of October, so the plight of those living in these regions is not widely known in China. This is so, of course, in the case of those who trust the news coverage of state television.
In the last week, the main nightly news program, Xinwen Lianbo, showed viewers graphic images of deaths, speeding ambulances and patients in intensive care. None of those tragic scenes came from China. They were from a bridge collapse in India, a Halloween stampede in South Korea, and the covid pandemic in the United States: all part of relentless efforts to portray China as a haven of order in a terrifying world. Xinwen Lianbo covers covid in China in a very laconic way, offering a simple chart with the number of cases every night.
As more Chinese tire of the covid-zero policy and the economy slows, some investors and other players outside the country seem increasingly convinced that China will soon join the rest of the world and eventually accept coexistence. with the virus. Share prices of Chinese companies saw a multibillion-dollar surge on November 1 thanks to an unsubstantiated rumor about a new pandemic political strategy committee. Such optimism hardly gives importance to the chaos that would be unleashed if covid were allowed to roam freely in a country that is inadequately vaccinated, without herd immunity and with poorly prepared hospitals. It also exaggerates the importance, in the eyes of party leaders, of citizens who complain on social networks. The covid zero policy is a numbers game. If all places were as unhappy as Zhengzhou, the party leaders would heed their demands. However, China has more than 100 cities with at least one million inhabitants. Most are not subject to strict confinement at the same time.
Seeking the clearest possible contrast to a covid-obsessed Beijing, The Economist's correspondent traveled 1,300 kilometers south to Jingdezhen. This quiet city of 1.6 million people, nestled in the forested hills of Jiangxi province, may hold the Chinese record for pandemic luck because no cases have been detected there in the past 33 months. Jingdezhen is strict about testing new arrivals at the airport and train station. However, when the visitor enters the city, the pandemic seems to be very far away. Stunned, this columnist joined hundreds of maskless locals who packed People's Square on a weekend afternoon, dancing in formation, keeping an eye on children riding scooters, or flipping a dragon-headed dance ribbon. : Scenes of freedom unimaginable elsewhere in China.
The Good and the Bad of Life in a Secluded Place Jingdezhen once made ceramics for the emperors. Now locals say they are protected from covid because they are off the beaten track. The city attracts few immigrant workers. Residents see a tradeoff in that isolation. Business is bad, says a woman who sells porcelain in a street market: the pandemic prevents tourists from traveling. She has seen videos of the United States on social networks in which the country looks normal, so she knows that deaths from covid have decreased there. However, she does not question government policies. "We Chinese follow the instructions from above," she says. "Everything they ask of us is for our own good, right?"
For more than a decade, Jingdezhen's porcelain workshops, low rents and rural charm have attracted young artists and those who want to "unplug" and enjoy a quiet life. Some refuse to take covid too seriously. A hipster cafe waiter jokes, "Jingdezhen is so poor that even the virus doesn't bother to come." Another cafe owner, sporting a tweed jacket and indigo tie, insists that Chinese in confined cities have enough to eat and drink, and can even enjoy a break at home. “Is it something to complain about?” he asks.
Not everyone is so simplistic. In a nearby workshop, a young potter trained in Europe is "very sympathetic" to the Chinese who suffer from confinements. He moved to Jingdezhen from Shanghai after the city's long quarantine last spring. Now he is concerned with smaller, little-known cities or regions with few young people. His sufferings are not reflected in social networks. He points out that many Chinese lead an atomized life: "Many things are incomprehensible to them if they haven't happened to them personally."
Party leaders will be relieved to hear such fatalism. After all, they are trying to prevent ordinary Chinese from knowing too much about the situation in other parts of the country. The disaffected have the possibility to vote with their feet, like those who have decided to ride out the pandemic in the quiet city of Jingdezhen. They will not offer another consultation.
© 2022 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved.
Translation: Juan Gabriel López Guix
