Why is China still aiming for zero Covid | Pakistan Twitter trends

Why is China still aiming for zero Covid - Report from BBC

In many parts of the world, most Covid restrictions are gone but in china, this remains the strategy lockdown such as this one in shanghai, and any change, of course, is being resisted

 

The Chinese authorities stated that “if we selected to put down now our efforts could have come to not anything we unswervingly insist on zero covid”

Zero covid means lockdowns it means mass testing and it means anyone who tests positive going to a government-run quarantine center also in shanghai we've seen officials in hazmat suits disinfecting the streets and fences to stop people leaving their flats and we've seen this too and if that's in shanghai elsewhere more than 20 other Chinese cities are under some form of lockdown and in the capital  Beijing people know they could be next there's been panic buying after new covid cases sparked rumors of a lockdown that hasn't happened but millions of residents have been tested now the zero-covid approaches save lives during the pandemic in china there have been fewer than 5 000 recorded covid deaths in the us it's close to a million and the Chinese government is keen to make that comparison but china's zero covid commitment may come at a cost the international monetary fund has cut its growth forecast for the Chinese economy this year to 4.4 percent china's target is 5.5 and if china's growth slows that could affect us all

 

The lockdown situation in china is not only a threat to the Chinese economy but the world economy as well very much including the UK. Shanghai is home to the world's largest container port which is now hobble the fear is of disruption to global supply chains which are already severely stressed those supply chains take goods from china to the rest of the world and the warning from the head of one of Europe’s busiest ports is blunt he told Bloomberg we expect a bigger mess than last year it will have a negative impact and a big negative impact for the whole of 2022 there's pressure on supply chains there's pressure on china's covid policy and that pressure is coming from these figures at the beginning of march there were 300 confirmed cases a day now two months later it's close to 30 000 a day and that rise is being driven by the omicron variant we know it's highly transmissible but there's another factor too vaccines 51 percent of over 80s have had two doses but just 20 percent have had a third booster dose because of this some of china's elderly remain vulnerable to Covid and china's healthcare system is vulnerable too

 

The real problem in China is not that people are dying but that they might die and that the disease the infections might spread because outside the bigger cities like Beijing and shanghai healthcare is bordered often on the rudimentary

 

Health care vaccine rates omicron these are all used as arguments for zero covid but this is about politics too

 

They've been touting for a long time that this is a sign of you know the superiority of china's political system compared with the west it would be damaging for them politically really to see that undermined and to see deaths rising

the state-run global times have concluded that dynamic zero covid policy is the only way out of the current complex situation but not everyone agrees this is the only way Chinese social media is tightly controlled but videos have emerged a protest in shanghai and then this is a confrontation as police force people out of their homes their apartment block is being turned into a quarantine center now though for whatever reasons china's policy has shifted a little

 

More significant shifts appear unlikely though not least because this autumn president Xi Jinping will seek an unprecedented third term in power and Covid is part of the equation

 

A Chinese citizen said that this is very closely associated with the presidency on his political legacy that managed to create a zero covid society and the Chinese population expects a society that is covid free

 

In time the virus may ensure that expectation isn't met but in the short term it's one of the reasons why the world is going in one direction on Covid and China is going in another.