What is China really doing with Covid?

[jyl]

Originally Posted by p911dad

Crazy thing is with all this going on we got an offer today from some travel site today (I think it was Travelzoo, maybe) for a trip to Japan and China. With all this going on, how can any company offer trips there? We visited 3 years ago for 3 weeks, had a nice time, nice scenery, etc. Ever again to China? No. Japan, sure.

I have been to China a couple times. Zero interest in visiting again. I’m Chinese anecstry, proud of it, but what China is now is disgusting to me. Taiwan is way more interesting to me - the culture and food without the dystopian police state. I was in Taiwan for three weeks this summer, dealing with my late mother’s matters and attending my cousin’s funeral. Despite the sad occasion, I had some good times and am thinking of a family trip to Japan and Taiwan next year. Not China - eff that.

[jyl]

https://apple.news/AhqtI0GB_Q9aQKK1IV90uTg

“Protests are erupting across China, including at universities and in Shanghai where hundreds chanted "Step down, Xi Jinping! Step down, Communist Party!", in an unprecedented show of defiance against the country's stringent and increasingly costly zero-Covid policy.”

Any predictions how CCP responds?

[jyl]

I found info on Covid deaths in Taiwan, which went from a very strict Covid prevention regimen - closed-border (so not a lock-down, but a lock-out) with aggressive contact tracking, visitor quarantine, etc - to fully “opened-up” (masking in public places/transit but no other restrictions) this year.

11,000 people died of Covid in the five months since Taiwan’s re-opening started (May to Oct, 2022).

(I was in Taiwan in July, and the mortuary/crematory system was so overwhelmed that it was an 8 month wait to get a funeral/cremation slot. My family paid a large bribe to get my cousin cremated in less than a month. The mortuary/cremation industry in Taiwan is run by organized crime. You’ll notice an unusual number of tattoos on the men working in it, including tattoo on their necks and hands. In Taiwan, that indicates a mobster. My oldest cousin has mob contacts … )

If you extrapolate to China’s population, that implies 700,000 deaths in several months - if China “re-opens” like Taiwan did.

Or more. Taiwan was late vaccinating its population, but by the time it re-opened, had recently done so, with Western vaccines. Taiwan has a good health care system, including 7X as many critical care hospital beds per person than China does. China could well see more deaths per capita than Taiwan. But CCP will lie about it aggressively.

[LWJ]

What an interesting thread.

I find it fascinating about the protests. Even more so that I read a news article a week ago that the average Chinese net worth has surpassed the average European net worth.

The people in China are not peasants in 2022. They have accelerated their economic power, it seems that the “cat is out of the bag” for Chinese freedoms. Can’t go backwards.

[jyl]

More and more protests are starting. Arrests are also starting.

The CCP has huge ability to suppress this. There are cameras everywhere, cellphones are tracked, all electronic communication (chat, phone, Weibo) are monitored. The protestors have their phones and in some cases are not wearing masks. They can be identified by geolocation, facial recognition AI, or comms. Anyone prominent (organized a protest, spoke at one) will be arrested and imprisoned. Anyone who attended a protest - or was just watching or walking through - can get threatening messages or blacklisted on the health app. China crushed protests in Hong Kong, and has strengthened its police state technology apparatus greatly since then. It has more tools than just riot police and paddy wagons. And of course the CCP can throw some bones too.

I think protests of hundreds, or thousands, are well within the CCP’s ability to suppress. Need 100s of 1000s, or millions.

Funny thing - apparently one trigger for the protests is that Chinese watching the official World Cup were seeing packed stadiums and no masks. Chinese TV started cutting away from the crowd shots and substituting close ups of players, clips of game action. Chinese started posting comparisons of the official and censored video on Weibo. Those posts are now being deleted from the app.

[javadog]

Remember, when considering what’s going on in China, that the globalists led by Klaus Schwab want to inflict that same model of governance on the entire world.

I’m going to root for the Chinese people, what’s being done to them is just not right.

[Jeff Hail]

Originally Posted by Arizona_928

One uses the term hospital and warehouse loosely...

Very observant. Inflatable isolation buildings and refrigerated semi-trailers. On site trash incinerators. Not much to figure out.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Lot of good video on this NYTimes article. There are a lot of Times reporters in China sending realtime video. Long read below but worth the time for anyone interested.



After a Deadly Blaze, a Surge of Defiance Against China’s Covid Policies

Protests became rare once the government cut off most routes to collective action. But ubiquitous Covid rules, bringing shared suffering, have created a focus for anger.

By Chris Buckley, Vivian Wang, Chang Che and Amy Chang Chien
Nov. 27, 2022Updated 5:20 p.m. ET

The fire began with a faulty power strip in a bedroom on the 15th floor of an apartment building in China’s far west. Firefighters spent three hours putting it out — too slow to prevent at least 10 deaths — and what might have remained an isolated accident turned into a tragedy and a political headache for local leaders.

Many people suspected that a Covid lockdown had hampered rescue efforts or trapped victims inside their homes, and though officials denied that had happened, angry comments flooded social media and residents took to the streets in the city where the fire erupted.

Now the episode in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region, has unleashed the most defiant eruption of public anger against the ruling Communist Party in years. In cities across China this weekend, thousands gathered with candles and flowers to mourn the fire’s victims. On campuses, students staged vigils, many holding up pieces of blank white paper in mute protest.

In Shanghai, some residents even called for the Communist Party and its leader, Xi Jinping, to step down, a rare and bold challenge.

The outpouring has created new pressures on Mr. Xi only a month after he secured a third term as party head, sealing his status as China’s most dominant leader in decades. The broader source of ire is his “zero Covid” strategy, which seeks to eliminate infections with lockdowns, quarantines and mass testing.

It has kept deaths from the coronavirus much lower than elsewhere but also brought many Chinese cities to a near standstill, disrupted life and travel for hundreds of millions and forced many small businesses to close.

Protests are relatively rare in China. Especially under Mr. Xi, the party has eliminated most means for organizing people to take on the government. Dissidents have been imprisoned, social media is heavily censored, and independent groups involved in human rights have been banned. The protests that break out in towns and villages often involve workers, farmers or other locals aggrieved by job losses, land disputes, pollution or other issues that usually remain contained.

But the pervasiveness of China’s Covid restrictions has created a focus for anger that transcends class and geography. Migrant workers struggling with food shortages and joblessness during weekslong lockdowns, university students held on campuses, urban professionals chafing at travel restrictions — the roots of their frustrations are the same.

The Communist Party’s greatest fear would be realized if these similar grievances led protesters from disparate backgrounds to cooperate, in an echo of 1989, when students, workers, small traders and residents found some common cause in the protests demanding democratic change that took over Tiananmen Square. So far, that has not occurred.

“Covid Zero produced an unintended consequence, which is putting a huge number of people in the same situation,” said Yasheng Huang, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management who leads its China Lab. “This is a game changer.”

“The anger has been pent up for a while, but I think the 20th Congress provided an expectation that it would wind down,” he said, referring to the party’s leadership reshuffle in October. “When that did not happen, the frustration quickly boiled over.”

By Monday morning in Beijing, China’s leaders, including Mr. Xi, had yet to comment on the weekend tumult, and party-run news media were also silent.

Covid travel limitations and government restrictions on foreign journalists make reporting on the protests difficult. The Times, which has two journalists based in mainland China, has followed the protests online and reported on the demonstrations through phone interviews, verified videos and sources inside China who have shared their recordings of the events.

The deaths from Thursday’s fire in Urumqi and questions about whether the victims were sealed in their burning building resonated widely in China. After nearly three years of pandemic restrictions, many Chinese have stories of being quarantined at home, occasionally with their doors wired or welded shut or emergency exits blockaded. That shared experience seemed to feed collective suspicion and anger about the deaths.

“Yesterday, I saw about the fire tragedy in Urumqi and was crying all the time, and then I thought of the time when Shanghai was under lockdown this year,” said Kira Yao, a sales manager in Shanghai, who said she attended the candlelight vigil there for victims of the Urumqi fire.

“Later we shouted, ‘No nucleic acid tests, we want freedom’ and ‘No to health codes,’” she said. “I felt like finally I could say what I’ve wanted to say.”

While many protesters limited their appeals to the loosening of Covid restrictions, some seized the chance to make broader political demands, linking the draconian reach of “zero Covid” to the country’s authoritarian system.

On Sunday, hundreds of students gathered on the campus of Tsinghua University, in northwest Beijing, where they have been largely prohibited from leaving for weeks because of Covid restrictions.

“Democracy and rule of law,” the crowd chanted. “Freedom of expression.”

Near Liangma River in Beijing on Sunday night, at least 100 people gathered to light candles and hold up sheets of white paper, an implicit protest of censorship. The crowd shouted encouragement to the protesters in Shanghai. Others stood on a bridge, also holding up white sheets of paper, while passing drivers honked their horns.

“We don’t want lies; we want respect!” a woman yelled. “We don’t want a leader; we want a voting ballot,” she said in a reference to Mr. Xi.

In Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the pandemic originated in late 2019, hundreds walked along the streets, some pulling down barriers that had been put up to enforce neighborhood lockdowns.

The protests followed hopes that Covid restrictions would gradually ease after officials in Beijing released a 20-point plan this month to limit the scope of pandemic measures. Based on that plan, people had expected local governments to scale back contact tracing and mass quarantines, but when Covid cases surged, officials revived the same sweeping tactics.

Mr. Xi has no easy response to the widespread anger. Censors have moved quickly to scrub photos and video footage of the protests. If Mr. Xi cracks down on demonstrators, he could anger the public further, straining even China’s formidable security apparatus. If he abruptly lifts many restrictions, he risks hurting his image of unassailable authority that he has built in part on his success battling Covid. The ensuing rise in infections, potentially deadly among the vulnerable, may also become another source of discontent.

“The immediate challenge is whether and how they’re going to continue with ‘zero Covid’ when there is so much frustration. This is a decision he has to make in the next, say, 48 to 72 hours,” Minxin Pei, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College who studies Chinese politics, said in an interview. “You can arrest people and put them in jail, but the virus will still be there. There are simply no easy answers for him, only hard choices.”

The political stakes were made stark in Shanghai on Saturday evening, when what started out as a vigil escalated into a street protest.

Dozens of people had gathered on Urumqi Road, named after the city in Xinjiang, to grieve the victims of the fire. As the crowd grew into the hundreds, chants broke out, with people calling for an easing of the Covid controls. “We want freedom,” they said. A small number of them openly denounced Mr. Xi and the Communist Party.

“Xi Jinping!” a man in the crowd repeatedly shouted. “Step down!” some chanted in response.

“This is unheard of in this era,” Professor Pei said. “It reflects a great deal of frustration with the Covid policies. People are just tired.”

For most of the time since Covid spread from Wuhan nearly three years ago, many Chinese have accepted tough controls, including sweeping restrictions limiting travel to the country, as a price for avoiding the widespread illness and death that the United States and other countries suffered. But public patience has eroded this year as other nations increasingly have adapted to living with the virus.

Workers at a vast iPhone factory in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, clashed violently with the police last week over lockdown measures and delays in the payment of bonuses. Earlier this month, hundreds of migrants locked down in the manufacturing hub of Guangzhou tore down barricades and ransacked food provisions. In October, a lone protester draped banners on a bridge in Beijing, just days ahead of the Communist Party congress where Mr. Xi won his new term in power.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

The Chinese government is likely to worry that images and video of the protests in Shanghai will spread, despite online censorship, inspiring more unrest. A BBC reporter, Ed Lawrence, was arrested by the police during the protests. In a statement, the BBC said later, “During his arrest, he was beaten and kicked by the police” before being released. It was not clear if he was charged. The British broadcaster said officials explained he had been arrested “for his own good in case he caught Covid from the crowd.”

“We do not consider this a credible explanation,” the BBC said.

Crowds also congregated in Chengdu, a city in southwest China, video from Sunday showed, with some shouting, “We want freedom, we want democracy.” Others yelled, “Freedom of speech, freedom of the press!”

May Hu, who lives in southern Hunan Province, said she spent hours watching a livestream of the Shanghai protests on Instagram, which is blocked in China unless using software to surmount censorship barriers.

“Before, everyone only thought about how to escape this all,” said Ms. Hu, who is in her 20s. “After, many people’s thinking has changed to, ‘We need to go fight and win freedom.’”

Some participants in the previous night’s gathering in Shanghai expressed fear that the widespread public fury could ultimately draw an equally furious official response. A recent college graduate who requested that only his surname, Li, be used, said that after seeing the police pushing and detaining people on Saturday night, he was nervous about joining another demonstration.

“After speaking out, some spectators maybe will feel empowered — that you can’t mess around with the people — but what will the outcome be?” said Ding Tingting, an art curator who joined the mourning vigil in Shanghai but disapproved of the rowdy chants later that night.

On Sunday evening, residents gathered in the same area, some shouting, “Release them,” apparently after the police seized people in sometimes rough encounters, video shared with The Times showed. Officers hurried others along, preventing them settling in place for any potential protest.

[McLovin]

It looks like they’re really upping their police state now. These are mass prisons.
Which is saying something, given what they’ve been doing for many years with surveillance, cameras on every corner etc.

[McLovin]

These are prison cells.

[Jeff Hail]

Quarantine what? Its airborne.

Where is all the infastructure, portable toilets, restroom facilities, medical facilities appear to be the ones with blue roof tops, mess halls, people got to eat? No above ground plumbing or conduits? Appears to be two rows with a common central gallery and stairs on the upper levels. No rooftop ventilation.

Looks more like death blocks. Starve them and turn them into artificial islands.

[aigel]

The Chinese vaccines are pretty crappy, so you can expect far greater problems than what Taiwan had with western vaccinations. Lots of older people, smokers etc. in China. But then we all suspect that covid measures are a great excuse to practice tight control of the population. Maybe both are reasons? This ties well into your other thread John, where you speculate about the outcome of Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Xi Jinping may have some bigger issues to worry about in the near future. People mid-aged and older appreciate what the regime has done elevating everyone out of poverty, but millennials and younger have a different outlook and much higher expectations.

[cstreit]

I wonder what their end game is. What we can see is that it’s not a huge risk to national preservation.

So is it control? To what end?

[sc_rufctr]

I can't see the CCP easing up. From their point of view: They have to maintain control and that justifies anything.
- I once asked a Chinese national about Democracy and she said "That would never work in China. There's just too many people".

Almost like yesterday... The Tiananmen Square protests were truly shocking at the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests_and_massacre

[jyl]

Control is an end in itself, I think. I am not sure if the CCP knows how to balance letting people vent and protest, but not too much, as a way to dissipate anger. I guess we’ll find out.

It seems to me that Chinese have an increasing amount of things to be angry about. Unemployment among college graduates is very high. Wealth inequality is almost as high as in the US. Living standards for the low income migrant workers is pretty bad. Xi is trying to enforce cultural control on young people. The censorship is obvious to the educated, internet savvy, younger people. The progress in living standards has slowed. More Chinese have traveled or studied abroad.

Letting Covid lockdowns be a broadly shared anger that unites Chinese from all walks of life is, I think, absolutely not something the CCP can allow.

Will CCP try to defuse this by quickly relaxing Covid lockdowns, and accepting the resulting epidemic, hence the “quarantine hospitals” being built? Or will CCP crack down and arrest tens of thousands, hence the hospitals’ resemblance to prisons? Maybe both?

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by jyl

https://apple.news/AhqtI0GB_Q9aQKK1IV90uTg

“Protests are erupting across China, including at universities and in Shanghai where hundreds chanted "Step down, Xi Jinping! Step down, Communist Party!", in an unprecedented show of defiance against the country's stringent and increasingly costly zero-Covid policy.”

Any predictions how CCP responds?

One thing for sure, Xi Jinping will NOT step down. He will die of old age in office. Dictator for life.

[aigel]

On the radio driving today a US pundit living in China for 20 something years commented that we shouldn't get our hopes up in terms of a change to democracy in China. People may be frustrated and unhappy but they aren't quite looking to the US as their Jefferson role model either. He pointed out that the Chinese have always lived in an authoritarian country.

[Rick Lee]

Originally Posted by aigel

People may be frustrated and unhappy but they aren't quite looking to the US as their Jefferson role model either.

Reminds me of what my first Mainlander GF said when a buddy and I were trying to hide our beers from the cops at a concert tailgate, "Yeah, America is such a free country. LOL."

[Tobra]

Originally Posted by cstreit

I wonder what their end game is. What we can see is that it’s not a huge risk to national preservation.

So is it control? To what end?

Same as here, control.

The CCP jab was really not all that much worse than the others. None were good or durable enough to be called effective.

It is nothing short of the greatest medical experiment ever performed. I am in the control group