Posted on 09/09/2022 5:44:27 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The Communist Party’s real priority is protecting itself, not the public.
The world has moved on from the coronavirus pandemic—except for China. Chinese leaders continue to lock down some of the country’s largest cities, spend millions of dollars on testing, and hunt down individual case after individual case. Nothing—neither a sinking economy nor the availability of vaccines and improved treatments nor the country’s growing isolation—has persuaded the leadership to change course. The latest wave of lockdowns has largely confined millions to their homes: Just two of those lockdowns, involving the southwestern metropolis of Chengdu and the tech hub of Shenzhen, affected a combined population roughly equivalent to all of Canada’s.
The reasons China won’t budge from its strict COVID controls lie deep within the workings of the Chinese Communist Party, especially under its current boss, President Xi Jinping. The zero-COVID policy, a mandate that cases of infection must be kept at or near zero, ceased to be about public health a long time ago. It is all about politics now—and that’s why it is difficult to discern when, or even if, Beijing will abandon the policy.
Beijing’s rigid approach to managing the coronavirus outbreak is a consequence of the country’s authoritarian governance. That system had some advantages in the early stages of the pandemic, almost three years ago, when the Chinese state’s extensive apparatus of repression gave it far greater means to confine and control the public than most liberal-democratic governments could muster. Over time, though, the pandemic has exposed how an inflexible autocracy that lacks the legitimacy conferred by the ballot box can become fixed into dangerous and self-defeating patterns of policy and behavior. That is precisely the position Beijing occupies today, as it clings desperately to zero COVID.
When the outbreak began in Wuhan in early 2020, the virus
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
China sounds like the “Democrat” Party unbound.
Xi and the Communists actually fear loss of the Mandate of Heaven for the Communist Dynasty. The Chinese system has not changed in 2-3000 years. Failure to take Taiwan is another sign of the loss of the MoH.
What does China know?
Why does China know?
Where shouldn’t China know
How would China know
Who
oh... it’s all political power now... you mean like... HERE?!
Unlike The Atlantic though, I don’t think this is about political power.
This is either because Xi knows something the rest of the world doesn’t about Covid (EG it’s actual biowarfare origins) or they’re actually performing a giant social experiment to see what kind of control they have on the populace.
it doesn’t make sense to burn political power here when they already have total control and it behooves the party to show that China is resilient and have bean Covid. They’re either testing social policy/control or engineering shutdowns to disrupt supply chains internationally. (or they think the virus is far more damaging)
The COVID pandemic has exposed the political vulnerabilities of modern societies of all types, democratic as well as autocratic. In the U.S., Washington’s failure to control the pandemic laid bare the problems inherent in the country’s highly polarized, partisan politics. In China, the pandemic has highlighted the dangers of an authoritarian government that is not responsible to the people. With no accountability, the state can do what is best for the state. For Xi Jinping, that works just fine.
The COVID pandemic has exposed every modern society's tendency to drift into authoritarianism and tyranny by the "experts".
Hard to protest from inside your house
bttt
Or maybe their early extreme measures kept transmission low and delayed herd immunity.
.
I hope China never gives up on “Zero COVID”
Idiot China lovers in business and in Media (Buffett, Munger, Loopy Friedman, Krugman, etc. etc. etc.) can be pointed and laughed at.
How’s your Chinese God doing, now?
China is treating Covid as a dry run to develop the quarantine and contact tracing disciplines that they need to combat a more serious pandemic or biological attack.
For example, a new virus with a mortality rate of 10% and an R0 of 7 for which they have no vaccines or therapeutics.
Xi is an old school megalomaniac authoritarian. It is a personal thing for him to “defeat” COVID, and he doesn’t care what it costs.
He and Biden have a lot in common.
Mandate of Heaven ... Big MoH.
It is not about COVID. It is Xi purging his enemy.
They are also using the COVID lockdowns to prevent bank runs. They have already broken up some bank riots by forcing people to isolate using the COVID app on their phones.
Building empty cities that will never be lived in can only last so long.
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