China Covid Update #1

Does anyone have any insight into whether this lockdown will fail, forcing China to abandon their zero-covid policy, putting Xi into a bad light as he enters his bid for the upcoming controversial second re-election?

A number of factors are all coming together at an interesting time: a big outbreak, the authorities struggling to keep it under control, a potential national embarrassment right before the lead-up to a historically important election. The consequences all seem so important, and yet I have seen very little in the way of informed speculation about what will happen as a result.

What are the chances that China can successfully contain the current outbreak in Shanghai? What about the new recorded cases in Guangzhou? Can China handle the logistical challenges of locking down 2 out of its 3 largest cities? What if it spreads even further, perhaps to Beijing? How many cities need to be locked down before the central government says "enough" and decides to live with the virus like every other nation in the world?

More generally: What are the consequences of a nation with such draconian policy for years to come? Will this mean that China will look less pro-business to foreign investors, as their business could be locked down arbitrarily at any time? Does this mean we should revise our estimates of future Chinese growth (a very important factor that plays into AI arms races, etc.)? Will Chinese citizens begin emigrate in greater numbers to avoid lockdowns?

Previously, Chinese citizens learned to cooperate with the central government because, as everyone knows, their lives were getting better. Each year was better than the last, as their standard of living approached the levels seen in the West. Now, their lives are getting unambiguously worse, growth is slowing down, and may never reach even 50% of parity with the United States. Are we seeing the fall of a great giant, a revision downwards from what was supposed to be the Chinese century?

(I promise I'm not concern-trolling here, or JAQ-ing off or whatever the appropriate phrase is -- just admitting to a vague worry that I suspect and hope is unrealistic. Feel free to downvote me for stupidity, but please also leave a reply explaining why my concerns are dumb.)

The Chinese government's continued super-cautious approach to covid, at a time when vaccines are widely available and permanent eradication seems impossible, makes me worry that it has reasons to expect e.g. worse long-term effects from covid infection than the rest of the world currently expects. 

I get that the government has invested a lot of political capital in its covid-zero policy. But I don't get why, now that continuing down that road seems at best extremely costly, and quite possibly doomed to imminent failure, it hasn't pivoted to a message like 'our policy was a success; we saved our people from getting covid without the protection of vaccines; now, with a health system fortified in all the appropriate ways thanks to the time that our sacrifices bought us, we make an orderly transition to living with the virus'. 

There seems to be a serious risk that it'll have to make that shift very soon anyway -- and surely it would have benefited from getting ahead of the reality, rather than being seen to fail and lose control.

One possible explanation for this would be a belief that the cost of letting covid run rampant is much higher than generally believed. (And perhaps also a belief that effective mitigation via superior vaccines or treatments is possible, but will take more time.)

So are there any plausible ways in which the Chinese government (due, I suppose, to secret knowledge about the origins of the virus) could still be ahead of the rest of the world in understanding its long-term effects, despite two years of open study (but, despite this secret knowledge, not yet able to produce a sufficiently effective vaccine or treatment)?

I remain confused why China doesn't use their massive government power that allows for these insanely strict lockdowns, to instead just get vaccines and boosters in everyone's arms. Three doses of SinoVac isn't as quite as good as the mRNA vaccines but it's still pretty damn effective against severe disease and death. (I don't understand their reasoning for not using mRNA and admitting weakness or whatever, but SinoVac certainly seems good enough.)

It would even justify the extreme measures right now, "Hey everyone, we know things are rough, we just want to hold out for X weeks and max out our vaccination rates."

What's scares me a little is this: If (or maybe better "When") this containment policy has to be abandoned, how will the Chinese government deflect blame? How will it try to distract the public? That could prove to be quite dangerous.

The most likely outcome here seems likely to involve continued lockdowns until China reaches herd immunity via mass infection, all while starving tens to hundreds of millions of people. Millions will die from covid or from lockdowns (starvation, no medical care etc), which will all be hushed up. In the end, once herd immunity has been reached and the bodies have been cleaned up, the CCP will celebrate the success of their zero covid strategy and raise the "mission accomplished" flag in time for Xi's reelection and throw anyone who disputes the official account in prison.

The official covid numbers will remain low enough to give the farce a superficial patina of legitimacy to the claim, and the Chinese people who are unhappy about being starved by a failed containment strategy will have no way to coordinate due to iron tight government control of all communication networks.

I guess there's more of a question about how things happen in the longer term. Slowing growth seems more likely to present a real problem to the CCP's continued rule, but many dynasties have ruled china for hundreds of years with virtually no economic growth, so it doesn't seem all that likely to me that it will matter.

Problem: A Covid outbreak in the Chinese population would destabilize our regime.

Solution via the politician's syllogism: The population can't die of Covid if we starve it first.

(Apologies for the gallows humour.)