Opinion | China plows ahead with its harsh zero-covid policy — despite the costs

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has relaxed its covid guidelines, dropping recommendations for quarantining, social distancing and regular daily school testing. Thailand has downgraded the coronavirus to the same category as the flu. The European Union has ended its emergency phase of the pandemic, and restaurants and bars are packed again. Australia and New Zealand have fully opened to tourists.

The pandemic might not be over, but most of the world is moving on. Yet there is one conspicuous exception: China.

Other countries are shifting to living with the virus, but China’s Communist rulers are sticking to their strict anti-epidemic policy known as “dynamic zero covid.” That means trying to stamp out every identifiable covid outbreak, no matter how small.

In practice, this policy has meant unannounced snap lockdowns of entire cities, keeping millions of people pinned in their homes. It has also stranded thousands of Chinese holidaymakers in local tourist spots, such as Tibet, Xinjiang and the tropical island of Hainan.

Chinese have to line up for multiple rounds of covid tests at designated facilities. In Beijing, more than 20 million people must get an officially sanctioned PCR test every three days to be able to enter almost any premises. Test results are displayed on mobile phone apps.

China has been largely cut off from the outside world for more than two years, with many international flights banned or suspended since the start of the pandemic. Flights to Beijing only resumed this summer. Visas for foreigners remain restricted to work or family visits, and foreign students are only now being allowed back after a two-year hiatus.

Incoming travelers must navigate a myriad of preflight testing requirements and then have to endure forced quarantine at designated hotels — only recently cut to seven days, down from as long as 28 days in some cities. But restrictions still vary widely.

China’s covid suppression policy has resulted in a remarkably low number of cases and deaths for a country of 1.4 billion people. Since the coronavirus was first identified in Wuhan, mainland China had officially recorded only about 945,000 covid cases by the third week of August, and 5,226 deaths, although many believe the number of unreported cases is far higher. That compares to more than 93 million cases and a million deaths in the United States.

The draconian measures have taken a toll. Growth slowed across all sectors in July, from real estate to factory output to consumer spending. Forecasters have cut their growth estimates for China to just 3.3 percent for the year, below earlier pessimistic projections of 4.4 percent. Beijing now appears to be signaling the country will miss its stated growth target of 5.5 percent.

Why does China persist with its covid suppression policy while the rest of the world is opening up? And how long will China remain a global outlier?

China’s stated reason is to save lives. The official view from Beijing is that China’s Communist leaders care more about human life than other countries, specifically Western democracies, that rushed to open their economies even as their virus death tolls climbed.

According to this view, China’s aggressive stance shows the superiority of the Communist system.

But behind the bravado, the obsession with suppressing covid reveals deeper underlying problems.

First is the vaccination effort. China has fully vaccinated nearly 90 percent of its population, according to official estimates. But the country has a huge elderly population, and their vaccination rate remains stubbornly low. Only about half of over-80s have been fully vaccinated, and more than 50 million over-60s have not received their second jab.

Because China has had so few covid cases, many elderly don’t see the urgency in getting vaccinated. And because of its 2½ years of isolation, China has not built up any wall of immunity through previous infections.

Then there’s the problem of vaccines. China has relied on its own homegrown vaccines, using old-school inactivated virus technology and eschewing foreign-made vaccines. But China’s vaccines are less effective and wane faster. Chinese researchers are working on their own version of an mRNA vaccine to rival the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna that are more effective at preventing serious illness and death. But so far none has been approved.

The third problem is China’s public health system, considered understaffed and without adequate resources, particularly outside the wealthier coastal cities and Beijing. China has far fewer practicing doctors and nurses per capita than most Western countries, and the problem is even more acute in rural areas. A nationwide covid surge could wreak widespread havoc.

So when, and how, does China emerge from its covid conundrum?

The experience of other countries does not lead to optimism. Those — such as Australia, New Zealand and Singapore — that imposed strict, China-style lockdowns in 2020 and 2021 (generally to positive effect) have all recently faced a surge in covid cases fueled by the BA.5 variant.

But President Xi Jinping is planning for a Communist Party Congress later this year that is expected to confirm him for an unprecedented third term in power. He is unlikely to ease the covid policy if that leads to a huge outbreak in covid cases and deaths upstaging his big event.

So far, China’s leaders appear to be waiting. Waiting for the virus to naturally ebb. Waiting for the development of more effective homegrown mRNA vaccines. Waiting for a more politically opportune time for opening.

Yet what we’ve learned from the pandemic is that covid is not going away. Sooner or later, China’s “dynamic zero covid” policy will have to change. The only question is not if, but when.