Opinion – Paul Krugman: How China Lost the Covid War

Do you remember when Covid was going to establish China as the world’s dominant power? As late as mid-2021, my inbox was full of assertions that China’s apparent success in containing the coronavirus showed the superiority of the Chinese system over Western societies which, as one commentator put it, “lacked the ability to quickly organize all citizens around a single objective”.

Right now, though, China is floundering as other nations more or less return to normal life. It still adheres to its Covid-zero policy, imposing tough restrictions on everyday activities whenever new cases emerge. This is creating immense personal difficulties and limiting the economy; Cities under lockdown account for nearly 60% of China’s GDP

In early November, many workers fled the giant Foxconn factory, which makes iPhones, fearing not only being trapped but starving. And in recent days, many Chinese people in cities across the country have faced severe repression for speaking out against government policies.

I’m not a China expert and have no idea where this is going. As far as I can tell, real China experts don’t know either. But I think it’s worth asking what lessons we can learn from China’s journey from aspiring model to disaster.

Fundamentally, the lesson is not that we shouldn’t take public health measures in the face of a pandemic. Sometimes these measures are necessary. But governments need to be able to change policies in the face of changing circumstances and new evidence.

And what we’re seeing in China is the problem of autocratic governments that don’t admit mistakes and don’t accept evidence they don’t like.

In the first year of the pandemic, strong, even draconian, restrictions made sense. It was never realistic to imagine that mask-wearing orders and even lockdowns could stop the spread of the coronavirus. What they could do, however, was slow the spread.

At first, the goal in the United States and many other countries was to “flatten the curve” by avoiding a spike in cases that would overwhelm the health care system. Then, when it became clear that effective vaccines would become available, the goal was or should have been to delay infections until widespread vaccination provided protection.

You can see this strategy at work in places like New Zealand and Taiwan, which initially imposed strict rules that kept cases and deaths at very low levels, then relaxed those rules when their populations were widely vaccinated. Even with vaccines, openness led to a huge spike in cases and deaths — but not as severe as it would have been if those places had lifted restrictions earlier, so deaths per capita were much lower than in the United States.

Chinese leaders, however, seem to have believed that lockdowns could permanently eliminate the coronavirus, and have been acting as if they still believed that, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

At the same time, China has utterly failed to develop a plan B. Many older Chinese – the most vulnerable group – are still not fully vaccinated. China has also refused to accept foreign-made vaccines without unreasonable conditions that have been rejected by manufacturers, even though domestic vaccines, which don’t use mRNA technology, are less effective than the shots the rest of the world is getting.

All of this leaves the Xi Jinping regime in a trap of its own making. The zero Covid policy is obviously unsustainable, but ending it would mean tacitly admitting error, which is never easy for autocrats. Furthermore, loosening the rules would mean a huge increase in cases and deaths.

Not only have many more vulnerable Chinese remained unvaccinated or received inferior vaccines, but because the coronavirus has been suppressed few Chinese have natural immunity and the country also has few intensive care beds, leaving it with no capacity to deal with an outbreak of Covid.

It’s a nightmare, and no one knows how it ends. But what can the rest of the world learn from China?

First, autocracy is not, in fact, superior to democracy. Autocrats can act quickly and decisively, but they can also make big mistakes because no one can tell them when they are wrong. At a fundamental level, there is a clear similarity between Xi’s refusal to back down from Covid zero and Vladimir Putin’s debacle in Ukraine.

Second, we’re seeing why it’s important for leaders to be open to evidence and willing to change course when proven wrong.

Ironically, in the United States, the politicians whose dogmatism most closely resembles that of Chinese leaders are right-wing Republicans. China has rejected foreign mRNA vaccines despite clear evidence of their superiority; many Republican leaders have rejected vaccines in general, even in the face of a huge partisan divide on death rates linked to differential vaccination rates. That’s in contrast to Democrats, who have generally followed something like New Zealand’s approach, albeit with much less effectiveness — initial restrictions, relaxed as vaccinations increased.

In short, what we can learn from China is broader than the failure of specific policies; is that we should beware of would-be autocrats who insist they are always right, despite the evidence.

translation of Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves