@tch1972 bro, if you look at it from a far, that strategy is like preparing the economy and its populace for the DUAL CIRCULATION STRATEGY. I'm being paranoid but everything the CCP is doing like the self inflicted Power crisis is there for a reason, they are decoupling and they had enough of the west, its condescending attitude and adversarial policy.
Coronavirus 2019-2020 thread (no unsubstantiated rumours!)
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Moderna costs nearly twice as much as Pfizer. It is not bang for the buck. Also, it has more than 3 times the dosage and much stronger side effects. It is not as popular as Pfizer.
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IMO, China keeping zero-covid strategy at this point is just flexing.
They are just being extra careful because they can.
Even if China opens up more, they have a strong contact tracing system that would be able to cut down infections within weeks.
Case counts and deaths are declining even in the US.
If a country has good vaccination levels (80+%), then basically there is not much to be afraid of. Death rate of below 1 per 100,000 means it is much safer than getting into a car.
China has the luxury can wait and see how the other countries are coping with opening up, the longer term efficacy of vaccines (both western and Chinese), and whatever other data they wish to observe. Something like how in certain areas of US and Canada uneven vaccination rates caused localized spikes in hospitalizations.
Once they have the whole spectrum of available vaccine technologies, I would imagine they will start opening travel bubbles with other low case countries with good relations like NZ or UAE.
The next step will also be vaccinating Africa.
China has a big role to play, all the top vaccinated countries in that list use Chinese vaccines. Higher roll outs to the continent will move Belt and Road projects further forward, and allow more business to normalize.
China needs to break into western countries such as Australia, New Zealand, North America, EU countries (other than Hungary) to show they can compete with western vax.
China's communist ideology does not allow anything other than zero covid policy. It'll hurt China in the long run but it is what it is. Every system has its strengths and its weaknesses. Nothing is perfect.
TBH, not all the other countries in the world have fully opened either, and some of them that are fully opened, i.e. US, and Europe, while on the road to recovery, still have sectors like restaurants and tourism which are operating well below capacity. China's economy is still operating at a higher than average level even compared to those that are fully opened up.
Until most of the world opens up further, its unlikely that China suffers the full negative consequences of being "locked down" as other countries are still in the same boat. I think by Q1 next year we are likely to see them reduced quarantine requirements for those that have been fully vaccinated (i.e. 1 week quarantine vs 3 weeks). Also, considering global vaccine roll-outs have been better than expected, (i.e. majority of world will be vaccinated this year) we should naturally see case levels decrease.
What needs to be avoided is a locked-down china where the rest of the world is fully opened, but so long as the rest of the world is still also in a partial lockdown, the relative impact to china of "zero-COVID" is still manageable.
Makes sense as the article mentions they can locally produce astra zeneca