A group of workers dressed in protective suits walk past a barrier placed to confine a residential area in Shanghai following the detection of a covid outbreak, in March this year. /
In the name of health, the Chinese regime takes advantage of pandemic controls to restrict freedoms
With their olive green uniform buttoned up to the neck and Mao’s book under their arm, the Red Guards rocked China during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). First destroying the old and then being deported to the countryside to build a more egalitarian society. Let’s change their Mao jackets for white protective suits, the Red Book for mobile health codes, transfers to the countryside for confinement in isolation centers and the socialist utopia for health, and we will have another Cultural Revolution.
It is called the Covid 0 policy and it is the largest mass mobilization since then in China. Every two or three days, hundreds of millions of people must take the relevant PCR test. Only in this way will they receive the green code on their mobiles that allows them to use public transport and enter shops, restaurants, official buildings and even the urbanizations where they live. Distributed throughout the country, whether in hospitals, clinics, booths or with a simple table on the sidewalk, nurses with PPE overalls take the samples between long lines.
Since the outbreak of the pandemic in Wuhan in January 2020, such spooky suits have become yet another of the uniforms that abound in this country. They are not only carried by the workers in charge of preventing the epidemic, but even by the stewardesses of the few international flights that China allows, which continues to have its borders closed to foreign tourists and requires a ten-day quarantine upon arrival.
Sometimes, this mobilization requires just the opposite: to stay put, since its objective is to cut off contagion and requires quarantines and lockdowns. But that also requires battalions of workers in white to seal off the cities in the event of an outbreak, disinfect the streets and distribute food to the confined, who cannot leave their homes even to walk the dog.
As many quarantines are not at home, but in hotels or in containers in isolation camps, those suspected of having covid or being positive contacts are transferred in buses like the one that crashed last month in Guizhou, in which they died. 27 people.
So that the outbreaks of the coronavirus do not cloud the XX Congress of the Communist Party, which will perpetuate Xi Jinping, Beijing is armored and the authorities have tightened the controls of Covid 0. In order to reduce risks, travel is prevented by canceling hundreds of flights a day or limiting train tickets, which circulate empty. In addition, individuals are warned that if they move to other places, they will change their health codes and will be locked up for between three days and a week.
“We’re going backwards,” complains a Beijing executive whose five flights this month for business trips have been canceled. “The government says it cares about our health, but it doesn’t care about the damage to the economy. Officials only care about not losing their jobs and use the excuse of the virus to cut freedoms », criticizes the businessman, who hides his identity.
Mayor control social
Professor Huang Yanzhong, Global Health Research Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, does not see “a strong parallel between the Cultural Revolution and the Covid 0 policy”. But he does acknowledge that “implementing this iron hand facilitates social control, which may be a hidden agenda of the State.” In addition, he warns that “the devastating economic and social impact of Covid 0 can exacerbate tensions between Xi and pragmatic leaders and bureaucrats. Similar tensions led Mao to launch the Cultural Revolution.
Criticism is as little tolerated as it was then because Xi Jinping champions Covid 0. In May, economists who opposed Shanghai’s disastrous lockdown were censured or dismissed, as was Hong Hao, chief analyst at the Bank of Communication with three million followers on the Weibo social network.
All this despite the economic damage of Covid 0 and its expenses. The consulting firm Soochow Securities calculates that all first and second-tier cities, which add up to 500 million inhabitants, will spend 1.45 trillion yuan (205,000 million euros) in one year on PCR tests, which is equivalent to 1.5% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In addition, this figure is very close to the total health budget, which this year amounts to 2.1 trillion yuan (296,000 million euros).
But instead of investing in more health personnel, hospitals and ICU beds, the authorities are building gigantic isolation camps. Instead of reinforcing the health system and vaccination to improve mitigation, they allocate more resources to controls and prevention, still acting in emergency mode. Although monetarily it costs almost the same, this option is cheaper from a political point of view. According to the South China Morning Post newspaper, a thousand officials have been dismissed for failing to control the epidemic, including those most responsible for Hubei’s outbreak in Wuhan. In contrast, far fewer are punished by the economic and social problems stemming from the restrictions.
“Compared to beefing up the health system, mass testing and lockdowns offer a quicker and less complicated solution to China’s Covid problems,” Professor Huang sums up. With a language more military than medical or scientific, this new Cultural Revolution aims to “defeat the virus with a people’s war” while the world returns to normal.