As the saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”
It’s a mantra many geopolitical and industry experts might want to consider in the wake of the China’s Communist Party Congress, which surprisingly to many failed to provide any indication that the global superpower will wind back its strict COVID-19 policies anytime soon.
I’ve lost count of how many times such predictions have struck out over the past three years, but let’s assume it is somewhere in the ballpark of a dozen now. After all, wasn’t China supposed to drop COVID-zero in time for Chinese New Year in 2021? Or was it after the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing?
And yet, despite widespread predictions that the Communist Party Congress was to be the real milestone in prompting President Xi Jinping to change his tune – and despite these predictions once again falling flat – it seems some observers have now decided that next year’s National People’s Congress in March or April will signal China’s long-awaited turning point.
I hate to break it to you, people! The truth of the matter is that, having now reached almost three full years of false dawns, predicting when China will finally release its COVID-zero policy is nothing more than a guessing game. And the safest guess is to move forward assuming there is no end in sight.
That’s not to say the end will never come – of course COVID-zero will ease eventually – but any suggestion that the end is coming sooner rather than later is based on little more than hope and certainly not on any concrete evidence.
Quite the opposite in fact. With fears that China’s poorly immunized population could face losses in the millions should COVID-19 – which has been largely contained since the start of the pandemic – were allowed to spread freely, President Xi made it clear during his opening speech at the Communist Party Congress that such an occurrence would not be allowed under his watch.
COVID-zero, he said, is a “people’s war to stop the spread of the virus”, a clear encouragement for the nation to continue its fight by way of sudden and strict lockdowns and ongoing border controls.
There have been plenty of clues in recent months along those same lines.
With Xi making it clear he is prioritizing ideology over the economy, mass-wide testing and localized lockdowns have become the norm in 2022 – no matter how large the scale or how crippling the effects. Remember Shanghai?
Speaking of Shanghai, IAG reported only last month that Shanghai’s Pudong New District had posted a notice looking to recruit a community epidemic prevention commissioner and 575 specialist COVID prevention and control officers on two-year contracts, suggesting local authorities are preparing to be in this thing for the long haul.
And of course, there is the small matter of COVID-zero serving its own political purpose. In President Xi’s mind at least, COVID-zero allows him to maintain control of his people’s destiny and keep track of their movements – none of which should be outside of mainland China – in an increasingly tense and unpredictable global environment.
The message, from what I can tell, is loud and clear – even if the optimists among us still don’t want to hear it.
