China vs COVID... and its collateral damage

(Second of two parts)

The number of Chinese citizens now infected with the Omicron variant is on the rise. Because so few Chinese people have been infected, few have developed antibodies to protect them. And China has yet to develop vaccines with the high success rates of the innovative mRNA vaccines used in the United States and Europe. In response, the Chinese government has confined more than 50 million people to their homes without an effective plan to provide them with food and medical care for other issues. The Shanghai lockdown has already lasted longer than the state first promised.

China has relaxed its Zero COVID policy in small ways, but it could do far more. For example, it could allow Chinese state media to inform the public that the Omicron variant is less dangerous than previous COVID variants and less likely to hospitalize those who are infected. It could accept more infections, and even more deaths, in order to lessen the public health harm and economic damage inflicted by the confinement of far larger numbers of people. But to do these things would be to acknowledge that the government must change course and to allow citizens to wonder about the infallibility of their leaders’ judgement.

This dilemma comes at a politically awkward moment. Later this year, China’s Communist Party is expected to break with past practice to grant Xi Jinping a third term as the nation’s supreme leader. China’s economy has been slowing for years as rising wages have undermined the low-wage manufacturing model that created the conditions for China’s historic surge from poverty to the world’s largest-ever middle class. The damage COVID has done elsewhere has also slowed the global economy that has fueled China’s rise. Russia’s war in Ukraine has created still more economic uncertainty. Now China’s own Zero COVID policy has led to lockdowns that will push growth lower still – and the impact will be felt around the world.

It’s a reminder that arguments about the relative merits of Chinese and Western political systems ignore a common problem: economic fallout and potential political turmoil, like COVID-19, don’t care much about borders.

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Ian Bremmer is the president of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media and author of Us vs. Them: The Failure of Globalism.