Africa -China Review Africa -China Cooperation and Transformation
Published: April 11,2022
By Gerald Mbanda
The latest outbreak of COVID-19 Omicron variant in the financial city of Shanghai has increased the number of local infections forcing authorities once again to impose partial lockdowns. Western critics have come out to blame China for imposing a zero-COVID Policy that is “inconveniencing citizens, hampering economic activities as well as disrupting supply chains.”
Shanghai reported nearly 25,000 locally transmittedCOVID-19 infections on Sunday. The financial hub of 26 million people is under the “zero COVID-policy” and the case numbers are small compared to other major cities globally. The city has become a test bed for China’s elimination strategy, which seeks to test, trace and centrally quarantine all COVID-positive people to stem the spread of the coronavirus.
The good news though, is that most of the current cases in China and Shanghai in particular are mild, and around 19,000 cases were reported as symptomatic. It is also important to note that almost 90% of all the Chinese population has been fully vaccinated hence creating herd immunity.
Few of those critics calling for a change in of the zero policy, seem interested in seeing the policy from China’s perspective, with the policy often explained in political terms. The West projects motivations on China, that reinforce their view of the country, and almost entirely dismisses China’s clearly stated basis for the zero policy to combat Covid-19.
China was the first country to experience the COVID-19 outbreak in the city of Wuhan. Being a country with the highest population in the world of 1.4 billion people, it was a great challenge on how to halt the transmission of the virus. Chinese epidemiologistslearnt quickly against all odds, that lockdowns, isolation, mass testing would slow down the spread of the virus. Science was followed without compromise, however inconvenient it looked to critics.
These stringent measures to fight COVID-19 virus paid off for China. As at April 8th, China’s total number of cases stood at 340,000 which included 25,594 new cases, while the number of deaths recorded were 4,638. In comparison to a country like the US with a population 4 times less than China, the latter is doing far much better in the fight against COVID-19. On the same date the US had total infections amounting to 80,200,000 with 35,123 new cases, while the numberof recorded deaths were 983,000. In fact, the US hasconsistently held the highest record of infections and deaths in the world. Had it not been for the stringent Zero-COVID-19 policy, some estimates show that China would have suffered more than 200 million infections and 3 million deaths by now, if it had attempted to “live with the virus” as most countries do.
The West which at the beginning of the pandemic politicized China’s approach, later adopted the same measures, but applied them in part and often halfheartedly, leading to disastrous consequences of very high infection and death rates.
Chinese authorities do not take chances when it comes to protection of people’s lives. It is far much better to suffer inconvenience for some time under the zero-COVID-19 policy than putting people’s lives on high risk. Again the Chinese philosophy of people centredgovernance puts the lives of people first before economic benefit, contrary to the western model that looks at profit gains first and people’s lives later.
China is sticking to a zero COVID policy because it has paid dividends. The country still has one of the lowest infection and deaths rates despite having the highest population in the world. In fact, other countries in the world should learn from China’s experience as a global role model in containing the virus.
During the Beijing Winter Olympics held in February this year, thousands of participants from 91 countries were kept safe from contamination in a “closed loop” where participants and venues were confined to epidemiological bubbles, strictly isolated from the city.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach said at a press conference on Feb. 18, that the infection rate at the event stayed at 0.01%. He called the closed loop “one of the safest” places on Earth. Also the Time magazine of February 21, published an article which credited China’s approach, noting that, “although some athletes pushed back against the rigors of Beijing’s approach, the Winter Games demonstrated China’s capability to keep Omicron at bay—something no other country has done effectively.”
According to available data, the Chinese economy grew by 4.9% between July and September 2020, making China the first major economy to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. To the contrary, in the same period, the global economy was slated to contract by 4.4%, according to the International Monetary Fund, which termed the situation as, “the steepest downturn since the Great Depression.”
Therefore, while Western critics of China’s Zero-COVID-policy are free to say what they want, the writing on the wall shows evidence that the policy is working to save lives. The zero policy benefits outweigh the temporary inconveniences. As China defeated the first waves of COVID-19 infections, there is much optimism that even the current one will be soon be defeated because of the effective controlmeasures.
Gerald Mbanda is a Researcher and publisher on China and Africa
