Opinion | With its grip on Covid control, China has done well by the world
- Had China taken the more open approach favoured by the US and Europe, the resultant spike in case numbers and mortality would have hurt its economic partners
- Any debate on the impact of China’s zero-Covid policy should also recognise how the world has benefited from it
Here, we focus on the opposite – the impact of more than two years of civil obedience across very difficult times in China and of the possible global threat of undue loosening of a policy regime that is unhappily strict and silent.
Although some see the dilemma as “zero Covid” versus better vaccination, where the former is preferred for basically political purposes, this is too simplistic. It ignores the global importance of China as a huge and altering economy upon which millions of jobs, incomes and investments depend throughout the world.
Whatever the precision or otherwise of China’s pandemic statistics, even starkly antagonistic commentators must acknowledge that China’s overall performance in keeping down Covid-19 has been spectacular.
For the United States, the same figures were almost 100 million cases, about 1.1 million deaths, more than 292,000 cases per million people and almost 3,200 deaths per million. The contrast between the two resembles two different worlds than two countries competing to lead the same world.
