What exactly is the function of China’s zero-Covid lockdowns, which individually and cumulatively now are far bigger than even the Wuhan lockdown in early 2020, when the disease was poorly understood, treatments hadn’t been identified, and vaccines were still months away?
The current lockdown in Shanghai and a recently relaxed one in Shenzhen forced 43 million people to remain in their homes and rely on government food deliveries. These were the biggest shutdowns the country has yet tried, aimed at two vital entrepôts of the global economy.
Of the 130,000 or so cases reported in Shanghai since March 1, 5,000 were said to have been serious enough to require medical treatment. Two people were reported to have died. Government officials say the ratio applies nation-wide. Why lock down for a disease that is so mild?
The puzzle is both nagging and urgent given damage to China’s and the global economy over a disease that is cold-like, not even flu-like, in most cases. One theory, bruited even on Chinese social media, is that the government is bending over backward, whatever the cost, to preserve a zero-Covid talking point that Xi Jinping has adopted as proof of the superiority of Chinese governance.
