Uncertainty. Not knowing when you will end up testing positive and be whisked off by one of the commissar’s white costumed goon squads in the middle of the night. If you don’t agree, that’s when they typically come, like the NKVD secret police back in the Soviet Union. And not knowing what will happen to your children, your elderly parents and your pets if / when that day comes.
https://austrianchina.substack.com/p/tragedy-and-hope-in-sha...
For people, who live paycheck to paycheck, this would essentially destroy their livelihoods. They would be out of money (since they won't get paid for weeks), could potentially not feed their families, and are at risk of losing their jobs.
That's indeed the Great Reset/World Economic Forum model https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/s... only they imaging to been able to substitute large homes with garden with a Virtual Revolution alike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Revolution capsule homes with metaverse-alike seats. A modern version of the classic panem et circense.
IMVHO China want to change it's demography quickly so they have to manage some justified enormous amount of "elderly" deaths to lower their mean population age. They need more young and they can't even nourish actual adults. A pandemic as excuse, with proper "cures" (not to cure but to kill), pushing people to suicide, ... is a mildly effective technique. In the meantime they can test countless of things and nearly no one will spot them. Some might see this as a so extreme theory that follow some flat-earth believers, and that's exactly why it might be a "good" one: the classic Goebbels "kill 100 children and the entire world will be against you, kill 100M and no one will believe, almost anyone will remain silent or even criticize those who speak".
I suggest a small reasoning in the end:
- did we agree that Earth is overpopulated?
- did we agree that IPCC/GIEC reports on climate might be realistic enough to be called true?
- did we agree that any human being rightly want to live better and so no demand of real, tangible "food rationing, lifestyle changes" can happen and be effective without some enormously real or mocked emergency (cfr. the classic Capitalism and Freedom)?
That what you think it can be done from here to 2030, a VERY short period of time in social changes terms, to completely transform the society? In the past we used wars, but with nukes it's not much a good idea AND wars tend to kill more young that old people...
Therefore they try these type of solutions like complete lock-down of a city of 26m people.
They assume that they are perfect as leaders, so planning is perfect and takes everything into consideration.
They assume that people will execute their orders perfectly, even under extreme hardship (hunger, lack of medication, being separated from children in hospital, being separated from sick parents, etc).
Of course none of that is true.
For all its failures, democracy at least has taught us to incorporate the human imperfection into the process and the decisions.
We have to compensate for human imperfection, the same way a good engineer takes into consideration the imperfection of the materials, imperfection of signals, numerical imperfections in algorithms, etc.
I am curious when China will adjust their model/plan for COVID to consider the vast amount of counter-evidence that is accumulating.
This is absolutely not unique to China. How many times have we heard "if only everyone did this or that, the measures would have worked!" coming from official authorities here in the west? I know it happened a lot where I live, and It honestly surprised me how almost every measure was based on that crappy assumption.
There are a lot of protests in China we don't hear about.
Something about Chinese (in China) ... leads me to think they go big on memes. They revolt unlike anything we know of.
Do you remember the video form Feb 2020 in Wuhan? The madness, hospitals flooded?
Imagine all over China.
As long as the economy is steaming forward, people will look the other way.
But as soon as that starts to slow down, then I think it's going to get hot.
Edit, for my naysayers:
"The number of workers' strikes rose to a record level in 2015. The China Labor Bulletin mentioned 2,509 strikes and protests by workers and employees in China."
That's just labour disputes and doesn't include disputes concerning appropriated land, safety issues with products - i.e. the kinds of things where there's some tolerance for dissent. [1] And note that it's increasing every year.
Especially due to the power of Social Media, if China didn't have censorship the CCP would be out within months. They are well aware of this.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protest_and_dissent_in_China
‘Just 15 days to stop the spread!’
‘The lockdowns should be stricter, look at how well it works in China!’
‘If you are against lockdowns, you’re killing grandma and you should be locked up!’
Federalist No. 51, James Madison
Probably it will take at least one year and a half - two years, at least that's how long it took the Western authorities to somehow change their discourse. Some people around the Western parts of the world still believe in mask mandates, to say nothing of the vaccine mandates if you want to visit their country (Greece, for example).
Thankfully all this China situation will have eased up the censorship reflex present in some Western media/social platforms, now it's again cool and super ok to complain about the lockdowns and to call them authoritarian because it's the evil Chinese that are implementing them. When us, the West, were doing them it was "for democracy" and for the greater good (for "the demos"). When the streets of NYC or London were empty because of lockdowns it was a civic thing, when the streets of Shanghai are empty (as The Economist was decrying in one of the its latest issues) is because the Chinese authorities want the worst for their people.
So far they've had to have ugly lockdowns in a few cities, but it's a tiny fraction of the overall population.
If it goes on for a long while - this will be a problem, but if they got away with it by having lockdowns - even late into the game - I wouldn't call it a failure.
That said, we really don't know what a lot of the numbers are.
Yes, people believe in mask mandates because masks are an effective way to prevent the spread of COVID. This is indisputable, so of course people support mask mandates.
> will have eased up the censorship reflex present in some Western media/social platforms
You can say whatever you want about COVID on social media in the west -- worst case your post is displayed with a warning stating it may be misinformation (and there is a lot of misinformation on western social media).
Only androids that are physically unable to empathise would make such an assumption. That's literally the definition of android from Philip K. Dick, and the basis of cyberpunk stories like Blade Runner. In this case the androids are the Communist Party of China and are trying to contain a virus with no knowledge or understanding how tens of millions of citizens would react to being locked in their tiny homes risking starvation.
The government is pushing for old people to get vaccination. Old generation in China are not getting vaccinations because they worry it may have side effects. As far as I have heard, the government is pushing it by linking some money (old people get some government money for special occasions) with the vaccination.
Overall, the country will have to accept the fact that the virus will spread, especially if they want to open borders. The current strategy is to contain it as much as you can. Once it open up, it will have a peak similar to Hong Kong, maybe hundred of thousands of old people will die.
There is no Shanghai exception for lockdown as a scientific policy, just like there is no Swedish exception. To decide if a policy advertised as based on universal biology is working you need to evaluate all the evidence, and cases where it doesn't work either disprove the theory or require refinement. As nobody can come up with a plausible refinement that means it's disproven.
<Sarcasm>which is why all democracies defeated COVID with the three-week lockdown in which no one left home unless they had to and took proper precautions to ensure that they did not dare transmit any disease to anyone else</sarcasm>
No, I would say that modern democracies and enshrine human imperfections into the process in order to further the will to power that exists in those seeking office.
I think western democracies had a much more commensurate approach to Covid even though they failed in protecting the nursing home population.
Even with that good news the damage from the lockdowns may not have been worth it, the world is re-emerging into a rather unstable environment with a lot of nervous people that looks ripe for WWIII. It is debatable whether the government interventions were actually a good idea, we don't have the full picture of what the costs were. I'd still rather have seen them pushing out honest, current information and then letting individuals make decisions for better or worse.
China has also taken 1 billion people out of poverty in just 3 decades.
> For all its failures, democracy at least has taught us to incorporate the human imperfection into the process and the decisions.
Since we’re talking counter evidence:
- Singapore is a benevolent dictatorship - Japan’s schooling system prepares its citizens to be model minorities, and most of the orderliness or Japan is because of cultural reasons. Additionally, people are expected to not make mistakes.
America does have other ways it recognizes and adapts to human flaws: by embracing the free market. Adam Smith’s wealth of nations mentioned it not out of altruism, but selfishness that everyone thrives.
It’s not entirely attributable to democracy. In fact, many are arguing to remove the electoral college. A popular vote would be more Democratic in the Ancient Greek sense no? But our founder fathers designed America against that, to prevent tyranny of the masses.
> For all its failures, democracy at least has taught us to incorporate the human imperfection into the process and the decisions.
This is not uniquely America or contemporary. Any great past civilization accounted for this if it lasted for a long time.
And whilst I used to be impressed by this "lifted a billion people" take, the reality is that lots of countries industrialized, modernized and huge numbers of people left behind agrarian poverty. This isn't unique or special and in fact when ranked against other countries like Taiwan, Korea, Japan - let alone countries like the USA or UK - China has turned in one of the worst performances. China still has widespread poverty and in many ways is still a developing country, 80 years after Europe utterly destroyed itself in WW2 and Japan had two of its major cities leveled by atomic bombs.
There's really nothing impressive about China beyond the sheer number of people the government has managed to hold back. If your foot is constantly on the brake of a very large vehicle, lifting your foot even half way will cause a lot of mass to start moving. That doesn't mean you get credit for it.
That's at least a gross oversimplification. One of the primary reasons for the electoral college was that it allowed the compromise with southern states that they could count slaves as population (well half actually), without letting them vote. There was also the difficulty of the voting process during those times. I'm not aware of documents actually stating that the electoral system was about preventing the "tyranny of the masses".
Capitalism took them out of poverty once Mao died and the Chinese government mostly got out of the market's way
- "“However, I don’t wish this video to be distributed in the directions I don’t want,” he added. “I hope everyone stops sharing, or please asking people you know to stop sharing.”"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/22/sound-of-april...
My understanding is that this kind of thing is handled by the ordinary police.
And with all those views - the Chinese government did not hold a conference call till 12:30PM? 12 hours later?
I'm no dictator, but I would have circuit breakers much earlier than at 400 million, and if things go 'red' I wouldn't wait till after lunch the next day to convene a meeting. But, that's just me.
Are you saying you're sceptical of something published by Austrian China: View from China with an Austrian School of Economics Perspective? Austrian economists are well-known for their firm evidence-based reasoning, right? :)
How does the authors know all this? This sounds like super detailed insider information.
> How does the authors know all this? This sounds like super detailed insider information.
My guess is it's made up: it reads like sci-fi (take an idea, and hang some plausible-sounding narrative on it), and I doubt someone actually privy to the inner workings of the Chinese censorship apparatus probably not say "retweeting."
Also:
>> View from China with an Austrian School of Economics Perspective
This (and a few other things) give me the impression of someone who thinks their ideology lets them see through walls, so to speak.
The orders already issuing from the telescreen, recalling them to their posts, were hardly necessary. Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia. A large part of the political literature of five years was now completely obsolete. Reports and records of all kinds, newspapers, books, pamphlets, films, sound−tracks, photographs all had to be rectified at lightning speed. Although no directive was ever issued, it was known that the chiefs of the Department intended that within one week no reference to the war with Eurasia, or the alliance with Eastasia, should remain in existence anywhere. The work was overwhelming, all the more so because the processes that it involved could not be called by their true names. Everyone in the Records Department worked eighteen hours in the twenty−four, with two three−hour snatches of sleep.
- excerpt from 1984
Are the news reports of anger by shanghai residents directed against the national or provincial(?) government? From what I previously read Shanghai was discussed as a factional stronghold not wholly subservient to the national government (to Xi). That being the case i've been curious if these draconian measures have been imposed from the national level meant to weaken that faction's provincial support?
Given the numbers of deaths being so low and not having read about overwhelmed hospitals, these almost seem like own-goals by the chinese government? But a factional dispute would explain it, in my mind. Does anyone have any better data?
And hospitals aren’t coping, and office blocks are being turned into quarantine facilities that lack basic things like showers.
Even the actual quarantine facilities are being used despite not being completed.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CcJFpN3pEN3/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M...
https://www.whatsonweibo.com/aerial-view-photos-of-shanghai-...
To the terminology question, Shanghai is a city (市) and not a province (省). However, it is one of four cities that have a special status formally equal to that of provinces. (Imagine if New York City was torn out of the several states it's technically in and made into its own state.) Practically, Shanghai is more important than some of the less significant provinces.
To the substance of the question, whether blame falls on the government of China or more specifically on the government of Shanghai, my view is limited. But I can report that one resident of Shanghai, a longtime friend of mine, is pretty vocal about blaming the Shanghai government.
https://austrianchina.substack.com/p/when-the-commissar-came...
Along these same lines, crushing dissenters is also something the government has much experience with, and has also "worked before" in the worst ways. I don't hold out much hope in terms of anti-government movements taking root and actually effecting change.
If the elites in Beijing are locked in their apartments for months on end, and start to go hungry... idk. I'm not saying there's going to be some fantastical democratic reform, but a coup that replaces Xi seems plausible.
Look at a TV “audience” with Putin and you will see the very same pattern.
Things go well: CCP success story and demonstration of superiority of China (note, not the Party, because "the people and the party are ONE")
Things go poorly: Local government incompetence, foreign interference, reactionary saboteurs "picking fights and quarrels"
---
What bothers me in the past few days is to make sense of what’s happening in Shanghai. There are quite a bit of rumors, but nothing makes sense. However, now I think that I have arrived at a reasonable explanation of what happened.
First, let’s establish some facts:
1. Once you have more than 10k cases in a city with Omicron (R0 ~ 9), true zero-covid policy (as opposed to zero-covid in-face policy, a.k.a. Hong Kong) will cause big human suffering no matter what. There are limitations on what an organization can do.
2. Xi is not a smart person, but he has a big picture in mind and is ruthless. He doesn’t mind being hated in one place, as long as he maintains the power.
3. There are no success stories under CCP to fight one faction against another with street movements. CCP is allergic to any instability, especially after the Cultural Revolution. That is why 1989 can only be ended in that particular way. If you only looked at the symptomatic cases in Shanghai, it can be argued that the dynamic zeroing policy is working, and there is no exponential growth.
With these facts in mind, it doesn’t make sense if Shanghai Clique wants to use the Shanghai situation as ammunition against Xi. The dissatisfaction of Shanghai people will only translate into street movement, a.k.a: instability. If it is a way to prove zero-covid policy doesn’t work, anywhere else is much better to start, and you want it to be nation-wide. For example, Beijing is a much better place to start and Xi would lose face big time.
What’s more plausible, is the following:
Shanghai encountered an outbreak of Omicron, and they chose to weather through this with a combination of under-testing and natural immunity (Shanghai has the highest vaccination rate in China and it shows from the asymptomatic cases). Xi & his people saw an opening to expel Shanghai Clique once for all, and start to implement the most strict zero-covid policy in Shanghai.
So far, the reaction has been what they were expecting. People are revolting, which in turn fueled hatred against Shanghainese in other parts of China. Further instability in Shanghai ensured, and that can only help him to consolidate power more just before the Conference. Remember, Xi’s base is never the middle-class from big cities.
What Shanghai Clique can do:
Contrary to other rumors, there are limited options Shanghai Clique has. Street movements (like Colour Revolution) would guarantee a failure, and further erosion of their power. However, they can leverage Jiang’s influence by having him visit Fangcang. He enjoyed great respect from the old generation of Shanghai. However, this is a tricky balance because aligning themselves as sympathizers to street movements is a sure way to lose power within CCP (like Zhao in 1989).
Today's article mentions this: https://austrianchina.substack.com/p/beijing-lockdown-rumor
The reasons I am strongly against the action (if it is the action taken by Shanghai government) are: 1) Shanghai is not an isolated state, it is a hub, any action taken by the government should also consider other cities because it will definitely spread into other cities. Shanghai has the highest vaccination rate, highest medical facility per capital, but other cities does not have such luxury. 2) You can have strict policy and then relax it when needed, it does not go the other way around, the first thing you want to do the test in a controlled environment, not having the virus spreading out of control; It is far easier to take full control at the beginning, and then try to relax in small areas; 3) the fact that the health department referring to 1 severe cases at the beginning scared me, ignoring the fact that all other countries in this world has shown .1% death rate, how can they be so naive. (I have friends also ignores numbers from other countries, arguing life is fine, but life is not fine for people lost their families); 4) the fact that Shanghai keeps emphasis that their unique measurements for covid different than others show their ignorance at the very beginning, which unfortunately led to current situation.
I can see million death if the Shanghai cannot contain it properly in the coming month.
https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3175393...
Shanghai adds 51 new deaths from Covid-19, takes total toll to 138 amid rise in symptomatic cases
City reports rise in new symptomatic cases to 2,472, while total new infections amounted to 19,455 in the previous 24 hours, a slight decline
Local health authorities in Beijing say the virus has been spreading undetected in the city for about a week
It is crazy that CCP is again on the course of self destruction.
Maybe this sort of self destruction is inevitable for every single major power. It is just a matter if one can correct the wrong and change course before it is too late.
USA ditched Trump by election. Putin is doing shit to Russia.
It is happening in China now.
Chinese people can put up with CCP because we have been through too much disasters. A stable and somehow rational one-party rule is NOT so bad as long as stability is maintained and people's private space is respected to an acceptable level.
Shanghai is right now at the edge of breaking this unwritten agreement between CCP and the people. If this goes on for a few more weeks, there will be social unrest.
I am not optimistic about it.
Xi is also up for a historic 3rd term after removing most of the checks on his power. The thrust of his campaign has been give more power to Xi, because authoritarianism solves your problems.
Anything that runs contrary to these narratives is not going to happen, even if it benefits the nation.
The BioNTech vaccince - an mRNA vaccine - has been produced and shipped not just by Pfizer in the US but also by Fosun Shanghai, since all the way back in December 2020. If you know anyone in HK for instance, chances are high that they were vaccinated with Fosun mRNA vaccine. This is not a secret or anything...
To put that in perspective, the fastest video on Youtube to reach 500M was Adele's Hello in 34 days, and that was the entire global internet.
This is not out of humanitarian interest. It's starting to affect business very significantly.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/european-business-chambe...
[2] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/04/16/business/japan-...
Well they should as they've caused quite a share of those crises.
It's one form of response to a deadly disease.
If people were literally starving in the streets, then yes, but that's not what's happening.
It's 'very authoritarian' - but we already all know that.
In a despotic country that could be a constant thing.
Others would call this idea "«astounding»".
Honestly I don't understand them, they could easily sell their COVID zero strategy as big success since they waited out much more dangerous variants until this common cold aka Omicron and they should now let it roam across China freely without any restrictions, though even with fatality rate comparable with flu it will surely kill a huge number of Chinese just because of sheer population. It would still not contradict narrative that previous variants were very dangerous and required harsh measures.
Or maybe I'm looking at it from wrong angle and this is really not about COVID at all, it's just convenient way to keep people locked NoKo style with all these health apps, but once you lift restrictions you lose control over people under pretense of fight against deadly disease (which is really on par with common cold/flu).