Relief, Nervous Anticipation & Omicron Sweep China

Scathed but not broken, China faces a turbulent start into the new post-Corona reality

View from China with an Austrian School of Economics Perspective

“I called my neighborhood committee upon leaving the hospital to tell them that one of my inpatient neighbors had tested positive. The neighborhood committee said there was no more need to notify them. We no longer have any supplies or testing kits we can supply; when you get back home you’ll have to look out for yourself.” (from a Beijing resident yesterday)

The remaining bits of China’s Covid regime continue to be swept away at high speed. Details vary from city to city and province to province, but the changes have come swiftly. First the word was that there would be no more testing required, with – in most cities – the exception of schools, hospitals and retirement homes. Then that changed to no more health code scanning. But maybe site code scanning. Or maybe not, since these are in reality just a subset of the health code system. There were a few days of disputes about this.

Whereas previously the ‘epidemic’ (疫情) was heavily promoted as being a mortal danger, the government has executed a 180% about-face, with the previous storyline hastily consigned to the memory hole.

We are now told that the current Omicron strains circulating in China are no more dangerous than the seasonal flu.

Schools in most cities with major outbreaks still remain closed, so for them the remaining testing requirement is mostly theoretical. We can guess it is unlikely to last long after their re-opening.

On Thursday Shanghai announced that test results and health codes would no longer be required for restaurants, bars, night clubs and the like. Presumably that includes the long suffering massage industry, long the first target of government crackdowns.

As for those stuck in fangcang facilities (centralized quarantine), first some cities (like Lanzhou for instance) announced that any internee with a PCR test result of over 30 cycles would be considered recovered. A few days later it was announced that anyone who would prefer to quarantine at home could do so.

The few remaining people still in hotel quarantine as “close contacts” were also all allowed to go home.

*****

Since the new 10-point set of Covid rules came out on Wednesday afternoon, over one million new comments were added to Covid-19 whistleblower Li Wenliang’s final post before his death in on 7 February 2020. One million comments in a few days.

“Doctor Li, this chapter of history seems to have come to an end! Things will surely improve from here on out.”

“I could never have imagined it would so long – three whole years. Did you see, the virus weakened, we’re not going to suffer anymore. Thanks to you we foresaw the virus; I hope your days in the next world are better (than in this one).”

We are in a space between worlds. Suddenly, within the space of a few days, the old world ceased to be. And yet, the new world has not yet begun, at least not in Shanghai. In a way it’s reminiscent of C.S. Lewis’ Wood between the Worlds.

In some other cities like Beijing and Wuhan things are moving faster.

The air is filled with a mixture of relief and – for those who have not yet had “it” – also some nervous anticipation. In many cases there is also a breath of fear. Some are already thinking about moving on. Others continue to linger in the old Covid-centric world, standing in short lines at Covid testing stations. One man in earlier twenties said he needed an up to date PCR test result in order to qualify for a vaccine. Another said he wanted an up to date test result ‘for himself’.

Masking rates outside are back up.

After three years of intermittent yet repeated attempts to impose totalitarian rule, China’s complex and multi-faceted civil society is emerging from the off-on pressure cooker scathed but not broken. Yet the price has been colossal: Once flourishing border towns like Ruili, Mudanjiang and Dandong were ruined, losing much of their population and businesses to the endless lockdowns. All across China millions lost their businesses and many lost much of their savings. Some lost their lives. Li Wenliang. The Xi’an baby who will never grow up because his pregnant mother was refused entrance to the hospital due to the lack of an up to date PCR test report. The Shanghai nurse who died of an asthma attack because all the nearby emergency rooms were closed – including her own. The 27 nighttime deportees killed near Guizhou. The ten who perished in the Ürümqi fire. The hundreds of victims of the Shanghai lockdown. And the countless victims of the untested vaccines.

None of these survived to celebrate this victory.

Luckily China has no “SADS” (sudden adult death syndrome). There is no Chinese equivalent to the Western “died suddenly” hashtag. Yet while the Chinese Covid vaccines don’t seem to have the heart and blood clot issues associated with the Western mRNA vaccines, deaths on site at the vaccine centers were hardly unknown, and countless others suffered from strange atypical pneumonia in the months after their visits to these centers. The Chinese government still keeps the number of vaccine victims secret, but we can make some guesses at the total number based on non-public statistics from large Chinese companies, as well as on data from other countries using the Chinese vaccines. It is not insignificant.

Life will go on, but some of us will not forget these victims soon.  

Nor will we forget those mostly young people who at great personal risk took to the streets of Chinese cities armed with blank sheets of A4 paper. What forced Beijing’s humiliating surrender may well have been the economic brick wall it was facing, but these demonstrators forced open the fissure in the dam which ultimately led to its collapse.

Nor will we forget the man ostensibly identified as Peng Lifa (彭立发) aka Peng Zaizhou, who at great personal risk hoisted those banners on Beijing’s Sitong Overpass on October 13th. We all owe him a great debt.

In the past three years all of us lost much of the everyday freedom which previously made China’s first, second and even third-tier cities into some of the most attractive places to live in the world. True, the freedom from the fear of violent crime and theft remained unchanged, but the most important freedom of all, the freedom to be left alone by the government, was severely impacted.

Boarded up restaurants in Shanghai

Despite the mixed feelings, the eagerness to get on with life is palpable. Some roads are now once again crowded. Voices fill the streets. Yet many once flourishing restaurants remain boarded up.

Meanwhile in Beijing, the new world may not yet have come into being, but the transition seems to be akin to a tidal wave in slow motion. At a staggering price, one very stubborn man held back Covid-19 for three years. Now that the dam is broken, there are two last prices to be paid – a hefty dose of fear and likely some chaos. While recent statistics from Guangzhou show that the current strains of Omicron encountered in China are basically never found to be an actual cause of death, they can be quite unpleasant, and no flu in history has ever been promoted like this one. So the fear is not entirely unjustified. Moreover, a wave of infection is racing through multiple Chinese cities at breakneck speed. In fact, there are now SO many infections in cities like Beijing and Wuhan that it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that two weeks back someone was seriously fibbing about the numbers. Scores of people are testing positive, albeit mostly using antibody tests in private instead of PCR tests. Close contacts are no longer isolated or even tracked. People with symptoms are told to just stay home and wait them out.

A number of offices still remain (voluntarily) closed.

Antibody tests and even Lianhua Qingwen (连花清瘟) are sold out everywhere except for Shanghai, where many people still have a big pile of leftovers from Sun Chunlan’s two-month reign of terror back in the spring. Ibuprofen is also sold out in places. This surge of demand comes despite the fact during the Shanghai outbreak Lianhua Qingwen (which thanks to a cushy back room deal for the manufacturer was being handed out for free) had a non-existent reputation for effectiveness.

This turbulent transition phase brings to mind an old yet somewhat seldom discussed phenomenon: namely, the isolation of 99.99% of Chinese, even those who speak Western languages and have extensive contacts outside China, from the reality of life there. Perhaps that is emblematic for our age, however. After all, the very real totalitarian regimes implemented since February 2020 in most of the world’s industrialized countries have splintered the once so interconnected world into many disconnected puzzle pieces.

Chinese obviously know about their own struggles to circumvent their own government’s absurd censorship policies, but how many know of the struggles of Americans and Europeans to cling to the remnants of their once sacrosanct freedom of speech? And vice versa, how many Americans and Europeans know anything more about China than the cartoonish dystopian image created and communicated by their media and social media? Very few.

How many Chinese know about the struggles of Americans and Europeans to defend themselves from unconstitutional, illegal and immoral vaccine mandates? Very few. How many Chinese know that many unvaccinated Western Europeans faced being shut out of public life? Very few. How many Americans and Europeans know that Chinese never faced any such regulations? Certainly less than 0.01%.

How many Chinese know that by September 2021, the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, a state with over 240 million people, used ivermectin, a widely used and ultra-safe drug available on Taobao for $2, to wipe out Covid-19 within its borders? How many Chinese know about the hundreds of studies demonstrating a high level of effectiveness against Covid-19 of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) in combination with zinc? This is a drug which costs no more than a few dollars in China and is considered so safe that it is regularly prescribed to pregnant women. How many know about the vicious campaigns waged by the Western press and governments to slander and suppress these two treatments? There are a few of us, but very very few.

A treatment for Covid-19 which is both readily available and almost unknown in China.

To the extent that Chinese know anything about the world outside China, it tends to come from Western mainstream sources, and these obviously don’t report about such things.

The lack of knowledge and interest is nonetheless understandable. Over the past three years, everyone had their own troubles to deal with. Yet these days all this lack of interest comes at a price for Chinese facing this tidal wave of Omicron infections. Some infections are light, especially in children, but not all are. Some are quite unpleasant, and for the most part neither the Chinese health authorities nor the people themselves seem to have learned anything from the vast amount of experience in dealing with it which has accumulated outside China. And it is the sad reality that, despite the state’s blatantly anti-scientific decisions over the past three years, in health matters most Chinese still continue to trust it. Alas.

Some chaos lies ahead of us in the next few months, but the Chinese are a can-do people, and now that the state has finally once again availed itself of the wisdom of Deng Xiaoping¹, hundreds of millions of innovative and creative minds all across the country will doubtless dust themselves off, get up again and find ways to work things out.

1. Allowing the people to decide how to get things done: It doesn’t matter if it’s a black cat or a white cat, if it catches mice it’s a good cat. (“ 不光是黑猫还是白猫，抓到老鼠就是好猫。”)