The China Thread

[Jacob]

Looks like there's looting in Shanghai. Wonder how bad the crackdown will be.

Source?

But yeah, starving a city of 26 million is not going to go well I don't think.

[HVC]

Was in my news feed, can't find the original one I read anymore, but here's the Dailymail

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10702811/Shanghai-residents-revolt-Zero-Covid-lockdown-Videos-shows-mobs-looting-stores-urgent-food.html


And I guess looting was a loaded term, starving people are rightfully looking for food.

[Tamas]

This mega lockdown of Shanghai is puzzling for me. Is there like a vaccination program still ongoing? If not what's the long term plan? Regular lockdowns for a few decades until covid mutates itself to nonconsequential even for the un-vaccinated?

[Jacob]

The CCP is incompetent. Like the Russian army. Ensure compliance via coercion. Be surprised when complex realties don't comform to CCP face saving requirements, then double down. That's the plan.

[Sheilbh]

It was Shenzhen earlier this year which is another enormous city, but this is going on longer and causing these logistical issues.

I think China's plan is still zero covid - so ongoing lockdowns as necessary, strict border controls etc. I don't think it's a plausible long term plan given the rest of the world (which I think has always been the issue with zero covid - once it escaped China). But if you're a totalitarian state that trade off is, I suspect, a feature not a bug.

I also think, practically, the Chinese vaccines are good - but they're not as good as other vaccines. China has almost no natural immunity because their zero covid policies have broadly worked. At the minute old people have not been vaccinated enough - I think it's around 50% and actually reduces as you go up the age scale (and risk).

Omicron is back to being about as lethal as covid 1 but it spreadsa lot more. So if there was an outbreak with Chinese vaccination rates there would be an awful lot of deaths. Even if China actually vaccinates everyone and gets the rate for the elderly up, there will still be in sheer numbers a lot of people who will likely die of covid because no vaccine's 100% - and when you're looking at China even a small percentage is going to be a huge number of people.

On a purely political level I don't know that the Chinese state has prepared people for that - or for anything but zero covid. My understanding is that there's been a sense that covid, far from being a crisis for the system, was seen as giving it great legitimacy. It took really strict measures but successfully stopped the disease (within China) and China has had very few deaths compared to many other countries. Any policy other than zero covid will change that (even though the vaccines are very good) - and I'm not sure the people are really aware of/prepared for that - but zero covid will mean issues like locking down a city of 26 million people with all the logistical challenges of keeping people fed if cases don't decline quickly enough, closing globally important industrial centres and the overall economic cost of keeping the rest of the world out of China. I don't think either route is easy.

[Admiral Yi]

At the minute old people have not been vaccinated enough - I think it's around 50% and actually reduces as you go up the age scale (and risk).

This part baffles me.  I would think China would be the one country in the world that could compel 100% vaccination.

[Jacob]

This part baffles me.  I would think China would be the one country in the world that could compel 100% vaccination.

1) The Chinese population - broadly speaking - does not have a high level of trust in "made in China" medicine, whatever the government may be saying.

2) The CCP went for positive inducement for vaccination ("get vaccinated and get 20 eggs!" and similar). While the CCP absolutely can (and does) discard public sentiment for various reasons at times, it is very conscious of maintaining public legitimacy. I guess in this case the CCP collectively judged that enforcing vaccination wasn't worth the cost. As well (2b), in an authoritarian society like China, people would absolutely find ways to get "vaccinated" status without actually being vaccinated if push came to shove. The Chinese are pretty good at circumventing the reach of their authoritarian state while appearing compliant. Forcing everyone to be vaccinated only for people to get sick because SinoVax and SinoPharm are ineffective and because some individuals and some local authorities collaborated to fake vaccination status, would be pretty embarrassing for the CCP (and thus undermine legitimacy).

[Razgovory]

Damn.  I could have gotten 20 eggs.

[Sheilbh]

On the latest lockdown - this is another reason I'm not sure we're out of supply chain worries yet, at least as long as China continues a zero covid policy:


This lockdown is happening to Shanghai, but before this there was one of Shenzhen - I'm not sure what the impact would be if more than one Chinese region/city was under this type of lockdown. But I suspect the global economic impact would be pretty huge.

Separately I see that Weibo has now banned the first line of the Chinese national anthem ("Stand up! Those who refuse to be slaves!") because of how it's being used about Shanghai.

[The Minsky Moment]

On the latest lockdown - this is another reason I'm not sure we're out of supply chain worries yet, at least as long as China continues a zero covid policy:

Shipping map outside of Shanghai:
https://twitter.com/AndreasSteno/status/1516325398644236290/photo/1

[The Larch]

On the latest lockdown - this is another reason I'm not sure we're out of supply chain worries yet, at least as long as China continues a zero covid policy:

Shipping map outside of Shanghai:
https://twitter.com/AndreasSteno/status/1516325398644236290/photo/1

Jaysus.

[Berkut]

That seems less then ideal.

[Grey Fox]

Maybe that will reduce the insane yields of the Shanghai-Western US trade route & let some empty containers go somewhere else.

[Valmy]

https://twitter.com/aliceysu/status/1511558828802068481

As seen on Weibo: Shanghai residents go to their balconies to sing & protest lack of supplies. A drone appears: "Please comply w covid restrictions. Control your soul's desire for freedom. Do not open the window or sing."

Christ   

Putin wishes he could pull that off.

It is stuff like this that makes me slightly terrified of the future.

[Eddie Teach]

Don't worry too much. In the future, you'll be dead.