China’s economy expanded only 0.4%
in the second quarter from the same period last year, the slowest pace
since the COVID pandemic outbreak more than two years ago. The sharp
slowdown happened after repeated lockdowns in major cities during the
three months ending in June. The country is on track to fall short of
its 5.5% annual growth target this year.
The
Zero-COVID strategy that China sticks to has become increasingly
controversial due to its impact on people’s life and the economy. The
main argument for the strategy, as a commentary (Zh) in yesterday’s People’s Daily said, is to protect the people from an infectious disease
that might cause deaths and overwhelm the country’s medical system,
especially since the country has a large population of elderly,
children, and people having contraindications to the vaccines.
By early May, 81.67% of senior adults above 60 years old in China are fully vaccinated. The U.S. had 0.9% of its elderlies above 65 fully vaccinated when the White House issued the reopening guideline on January 20 last year, and the rate increased to 81.4% on July 1, 2021, when almost all U.S. states had reopened. So far, over 1 million Americans have died from COVID, compared with 14,651 in China. However, the number of non-COVID deaths due to the restrictions in China is unknown.
One
cannot run experiences on history to tell which is worse for China, a
stagnated economy, or a high COVID death toll. But the pain of low
economic growth has already been felt and will have profound social
implications.
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