.realaxelfoley spoke with Nancy Qian, a professor at Northwestern University, who has written extensively about the Chinese economy, about why China is still pursuing a 'COVID zero' policy
A Shanghai neighborhood under lockdown Photo: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images What is China doing? As most countries resign themselves to living with COVID, which shows no sign of receding anytime soon, the world’s most populous nation continues to take a very different path — at great cost, and with seemingly no endgame in sight.
In China, there’s only one vaccine that’s available to people. The information about side effects, about success rates — it’s not that transparent, and people are a little bit wary. It’s not like in the U.S., where you can look at independent evaluations of all of the different vaccines around, you can talk to your doctor, you can watch the news. Everyone’s having very often contentious but open debates, which we know from research builds trust in the long run.
Right. President Xi Jinping’s government mishandled it at the beginning, covering up early cases and triggering a widespread breach of trust. Then they turned around and put in place a policy that was quite successful for a while. COVID zero is tremendously unpopular. I’ve never met or talked to anyone who thinks that it’s a good policy or that they don’t need to get out of it.
Yes, there is a meeting coming up. One thing to keep an eye on is in China, nothing happens immediately. A lot of things happen behind closed doors, and they don’t air their dirty laundry in public, with very few exceptions.