Does anyone have any insight into whether this lockdown will fail, forcing China to abandon their zero-covid policy, putting Xi into a bad light as he enters his bid for the upcoming controversial second re-election?
A number of factors are all coming together at an interesting time: a big outbreak, the authorities struggling to keep it under control, a potential national embarrassment right before the lead-up to a historically important election. The consequences all seem so important, and yet I have seen very little in the way of informed speculation about what will happen as a result.
What are the chances that China can successfully contain the current outbreak in Shanghai? What about the new recorded cases in Guangzhou? Can China handle the logistical challenges of locking down 2 out of its 3 largest cities? What if it spreads even further, perhaps to Beijing? How many cities need to be locked down before the central government says “enough” and decides to live with the virus like every other nation in the world?
More generally: What are the consequences of a nation with such draconian policy for years to come? Will this mean that China will look less pro-business to foreign investors, as their business could be locked down arbitrarily at any time? Does this mean we should revise our estimates of future Chinese growth (a very important factor that plays into AI arms races, etc.)? Will Chinese citizens begin emigrate in greater numbers to avoid lockdowns?
Previously, Chinese citizens learned to cooperate with the central government because, as everyone knows, their lives were getting better. Each year was better than the last, as their standard of living approached the levels seen in the West. Now, their lives are getting unambiguously worse, growth is slowing down, and may never reach even 50% of parity with the United States. Are we seeing the fall of a great giant, a revision downwards from what was supposed to be the Chinese century?
This is an interesting time for Xi. I don’t know of any good betting markets here but Xi may be in more danger than he has been for years, and may be re-elected with constraints like a promise to make it his last term or not re-elected at all.
Pekinology is hard, but in addition to the still-escalating coronavirus failure, there is a Russian report that Xi was considering invading Taiwan before the re-election as a quick victorious war of revanchism against a much smaller isolated decadently-demoralized enemy (ie. just like Putin & Ukraine), which given the risk of failure implies either that Xi is higher than a kite on his own propaganda supply & totalitarian epistemic closure or that he is much less secure than one would think. There is further a report from Nikkei that the Politburo itself (the only group that could reasonably force Xi to step down or otherwise rein him in) is deeply unhappy with Xi and particularly outraged at his encouragement (the ‘coincidental’ timing of Putin delaying the invasion to right after Xi’s Olympics has been lost on no one, never mind the subsequent water-carrying) of the boondoggle of Ukraine.
Whether the lockdown fails or not depends on its goals, which we don’t really know much about. I’d bet that it’ll fail to achieve anything resembling zero-covid due to Omicron being more contagious and vaccines less effective, however it might be successful in slowing the (Omicron) epidemic down enough so Hong Kong scenario (i.e. most of the previous waves mortality as experienced elsewhere packed into a few weeks) is avoided
Does anyone have any insight into whether this lockdown will fail, forcing China to abandon their zero-covid policy, putting Xi into a bad light as he enters his bid for the upcoming controversial second re-election?
A number of factors are all coming together at an interesting time: a big outbreak, the authorities struggling to keep it under control, a potential national embarrassment right before the lead-up to a historically important election. The consequences all seem so important, and yet I have seen very little in the way of informed speculation about what will happen as a result.
What are the chances that China can successfully contain the current outbreak in Shanghai? What about the new recorded cases in Guangzhou? Can China handle the logistical challenges of locking down 2 out of its 3 largest cities? What if it spreads even further, perhaps to Beijing? How many cities need to be locked down before the central government says “enough” and decides to live with the virus like every other nation in the world?
More generally: What are the consequences of a nation with such draconian policy for years to come? Will this mean that China will look less pro-business to foreign investors, as their business could be locked down arbitrarily at any time? Does this mean we should revise our estimates of future Chinese growth (a very important factor that plays into AI arms races, etc.)? Will Chinese citizens begin emigrate in greater numbers to avoid lockdowns?
Previously, Chinese citizens learned to cooperate with the central government because, as everyone knows, their lives were getting better. Each year was better than the last, as their standard of living approached the levels seen in the West. Now, their lives are getting unambiguously worse, growth is slowing down, and may never reach even 50% of parity with the United States. Are we seeing the fall of a great giant, a revision downwards from what was supposed to be the Chinese century?
This is an interesting time for Xi. I don’t know of any good betting markets here but Xi may be in more danger than he has been for years, and may be re-elected with constraints like a promise to make it his last term or not re-elected at all.
Pekinology is hard, but in addition to the still-escalating coronavirus failure, there is a Russian report that Xi was considering invading Taiwan before the re-election as a quick victorious war of revanchism against a much smaller isolated decadently-demoralized enemy (ie. just like Putin & Ukraine), which given the risk of failure implies either that Xi is higher than a kite on his own propaganda supply & totalitarian epistemic closure or that he is much less secure than one would think. There is further a report from Nikkei that the Politburo itself (the only group that could reasonably force Xi to step down or otherwise rein him in) is deeply unhappy with Xi and particularly outraged at his encouragement (the ‘coincidental’ timing of Putin delaying the invasion to right after Xi’s Olympics has been lost on no one, never mind the subsequent water-carrying) of the boondoggle of Ukraine.
Whether the lockdown fails or not depends on its goals, which we don’t really know much about. I’d bet that it’ll fail to achieve anything resembling zero-covid due to Omicron being more contagious and vaccines less effective, however it might be successful in slowing the (Omicron) epidemic down enough so Hong Kong scenario (i.e. most of the previous waves mortality as experienced elsewhere packed into a few weeks) is avoided