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The unintended consequence of China's zero-COVID policy
Nikkei Asia ^

Posted on 06/22/2022 4:10:55 AM PDT by FarCenter

....

On March 28, days before Shanghai went into a strict lockdown on April 1, and just as parents were preparing for the school enrollment period, the Ministry of Education issued a notice stating that inequalities related to school access must be overcome.

Families registered in an area for at least six months must have equal access to local schools and without facing pre-enrollment academic testing, the notice stated. In Beijing, China's most prized educational zone, municipality and district-level implementation guidelines followed soon after.

Furthermore, school application processes in Beijing and Shanghai were recently digitalized, with Shanghai having moderately relaxed the relevant admission requirements given the difficulties associated with ongoing lockdowns.

Come September, after decades of migrant child school lockouts and a long collective pandemic lockdown, it is now likely that classrooms in both cities may suddenly, newly relatively, reflect their true socioeconomic makeup.

Another change announced during the Shanghai lockdown was that a centralized digital database of civil administration was nearing finalization. When complete, Chinese citizens will be able to avoid returning to their hukou hometown to undertake most, if not all, civil-related tasks, such as marriage, registering a business, or accessing a pension or unemployment benefits.

This reflects "the modernization of the national governance system and capacity, and plays an important role in the stability, unity and harmony of the whole society, as well as our response to the epidemic," said professor Liu Junhai, director of the Institute of Commercial Law at Renmin University of China.

This means that China's migrant entrepreneurs will no longer need to take time off to register changes to their business. Equivalently, grandparents supporting their children at home and abroad will be able to perform pensioner-related tasks online too.

COVID-19, it turns out, may be the catalyst for marking down elements of the value of an elite hukou in that it is enabling a digitization revolution. That, in turn, may eventually serve to better equalize labor productivity and social mobility across rapidly aging China.

Xi's zero-COVID policy may have exposed China's economy to lasting damage. But the long-term impact on China may not be fully understood for many years to come.


TOPICS: News/Current Events
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Changing the hukou system to allow more social and geographic mobility will be a big reform.
1 posted on 06/22/2022 4:10:55 AM PDT by FarCenter
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To: FarCenter

China is a textbook of unintended consequences.


2 posted on 06/22/2022 4:19:52 AM PDT by ImJustAnotherOkie (Let's go Brandon)
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To: FarCenter

China is a bandit civilization populated by low level midwits who should have been left to Imperial Japan.


3 posted on 06/22/2022 4:46:55 AM PDT by nonliberal (Z.)
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To: FarCenter

Plus they disrupted the world supply chain which the resident is too stupid to bring back to the US!


4 posted on 06/22/2022 8:45:18 AM PDT by Harpotoo (Being a socialist is a lot easier than having to WORK like the rest of US:-))
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