China lives at the crossroads with zero Covid and 21% of GDP in lockdown

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Cities that account for 21% of Chinese GDP are in lockdown to contain the spread of Covid-19, estimated a report by consultancy Nomura released this Thursday (24). The expectation is that the number will rise to 30% in the coming weeks.

The statistic shows how difficult it has become to control disease infections in the most populous country in the world. The main Chinese metropolises – Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chongqing – have been registering successive records in numbers of cases, although they are reluctant to lock all inhabitants, fearing economic and financial repercussions.

The report points to “widespread deterioration in mobility and business indicators” in China. With record debt in local governments, money is lacking to continue funding frequent mass testing and the opening of new centralized quarantine facilities, which makes it difficult to control the virus.

Economists polled by the Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post assess that the high number of daily cases indicates that China has reached the “point of no return” and will hardly be able to zero infections, unless it adopts a lockdown as strict as that of Shanghai at the beginning. of the year.

Reopening the country immediately, however, is not an option – Bloomberg estimates that the measure would lead to a demand for 5.8 million ICU beds, far above the capacity of the Chinese health system. Official data show that China has 4 ICU beds per 100,000 inhabitants, a number well below the 27 in the United States and 20 in Brazil, for example.

The Bloomberg study also shows that if the volume of omicron infections in China follows the patterns seen in the US or Europe, the first six months of the variant’s outbreak in China would lead to 363 million infections and at least 620,000 deaths.

Why it matters: as I told in Sheet this week, the Chinese leadership is aware of the effects of Covid on the economy and is looking for alternatives to reopen the country in a cautious way.
Health authorities have been betting all the chips on inhalable vaccines, and the propaganda machine has reversed the narrative: if before the priority was to show victory over the virus, now the strategy is to show that the variant is much less aggressive than the original strain from Wuhan.

The data show that China has reached a crossroads.

• If it doesn’t reopen, it will certainly see its economy shrink significantly.
• If it reopens, it risks having to deal with chaos in the health care system, undermining the stability and legitimacy of the Communist Party.

what also matters

China will start an unprecedented project that intends to collect solar energy in space and send it to Earth. The plans were announced by the chief designer of the Chinese space station Tiangong, Yang Hong.

According to the scientist, the idea is to install a space solar power plant one kilometer wide, capable of radiating microwaves at a distance of 36,000 kilometers from Earth. The beams would penetrate the clouds and be picked up by antennas capable of absorbing and distributing electrical energy anywhere in the territory.

The project, however, presents challenges. There are concerns about possible consequences for human health and the environment, as well as possible interference with communication satellites. The transmission can cause excessive heat that is difficult to contain in space, and experts fear the technology could be reconverted for military purposes.

The Chinese predict that the initiative will already be able to power military posts in the 2030s, while the expectation is to generate enough electricity to power commercial stations around 2050.

The Taiwanese government will investigate an infantry officer suspected of receiving monthly payments from China to gather sensitive information and surrender in the event of war.

According to the complaint, the colonel had been receiving around NT$40,000 (about R$7,000) monthly since 2019, when he was recruited as a spy. Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense reacted to the case by saying the allegations show “how the Chinese Communist Party’s infiltration and recruitment, intelligence gathering and theft of secrets has become a serious threat”.

The soldier did not have his identity revealed, and Defense officials said they would start a more robust work to train the troops and educate them against possible spying efforts by mainland China.

keep an eye

China and the United States are said to be working to restore unofficial channels of contact. According to press reports, a large group of Chinese academics, businessmen and government officials met with former US officials and businessmen in New York.

• The Chinese side featured several important names, such as former Minister of Commerce Chen Deming and former Chinese Ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai;
• Among the Americans were former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former president and CEO of the insurance company American International Group, Maurice Greenberg. Both are known to be good liaisons in the US government and maintain close ties with China.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the meeting had the informal support of the Chinese Foreign Ministry and the White House National Security Council. The paper says China hoped to use the meeting to resume talks through “informal diplomacy” promoted by think tanks and industry groups on both sides.

Why it matters: it was precisely the encounters between civilians that re-established diplomatic relations between the two sides in the past. Kissinger himself was instrumental in the process, recognizing that the then Chinese leader Mao Zedong had been trying to signal openness to the US through the American journalist Edgar Snow, a notorious sympathizer of the Chinese communist cause.

The expectation is that these meetings, interrupted for almost three years due to the pandemic, will help reduce the mutual distrust that has eroded Chinese-American ties.

to go deep

• The Confucius Institute of the Federal University of Goiás is going to inaugurate a center of Chinese medicine. The ceremony to launch the novelty takes place on December 8, at 9 am, in the auditorium of the Faculty of Humanities of UFG. (free)
• The UFPE Asian Studies Coordination held an online event this week to discuss the tradition of the Chinese legal system. The broadcast was recorded and made available on the group’s YouTube channel. (free, in Portuguese)