Thread by @WilliamYang120

"#China’s leaders can see in their neighbours a Covid situation that they fear could be their fate if the virus takes hold and they have responded with a lockdown in #Shanghai that has lasted seven weeks and shows no immediate signs of ending." theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

"As locals stay confined to their homes, drones fly near apartment blocks, intoning the phrase: “Control your soul’s desire for freedom.” China can still argue that in absolute terms its “zero-Covid” policy has had remarkable success in preventing deaths."

"But it has come at a price; there is no clear policy for how China can reopen its borders to live with a virus that scientists expect to become endemic, or how to deal with it, other than with repeated lockdowns that harm the fragile economy and have led to increased panic ...

... as whole households are taken to quarantine because one case has been detected in an apartment block."

"The zero-Covid policy, in which the virus is to be eliminated from China, is personally associated with Xi and it would be immensely difficult to change the narrative before the congress."

"Therefore other ways of explaining the lockdown have taken hold. One is the story that China’s system allows a more efficient, if controversial, deployment of mass mobilisation combined with high-quality science."

"Social media has been filled with discussions of the “dabai”, literally “big whites”, health enforcement workers, dressed head to toe in white PVC PPE, who spray disinfectant in suspect households and who have the power to compel people into quarantine."

"For some, they are symbols of a futuristic modernity. Their critics say that they represent the faceless power of the authoritarian state that allows no appeal. However, the online discussion misses a key point: the dabai are just ordinary officials and workers."

"By deflecting attention to the harsh tactics of workers on the ground, the public is distracted from discussing the national-level policy (a discussion that censorship mostly prevents)."

"China’s national pride means that it won’t import the western vaccines but, despite huge amounts of investment from state and private sector, its own labs have not yet come up with a Chinese equivalent."

"Several private sector pharmaceutical companies are reported to have mRNA vaccines in the test stage, but even when they are approved by the regulators, there still needs to be a national rollout and much more effort to get the elderly to take the vaccine."

"In the short term, in a year of significant domestic politics and turbulent economics, there are some advantages to keeping the doors shut. China isn’t dependent on tourism or foreign student numbers,...

... it has very low immigration levels and it needs relatively few overseas executives to keep even its internationally oriented businesses going."

"More broadly, China has always done best when it has been most open to ideas and influences from the wider world. In the 1920s, Shanghai was the crucible of Chinese modernity,...

... as its sophisticated young people drank French coffee, read Russian novels and dreamed of studying in America."

"It would be a bitter irony if the 2020s saw the same great cosmopolitan city forced to retreat in the face of an irrepressible virus, with the vibe not of Paris but of Pyongyang."