The disease: pressure resolved in China, for now
After a month and a half, where the whole society paused, it seems that the spreading of COVID 19 in China has been successfully contained. In the past two days, all the new confirmed cases in China are those intercepted from the custom border (imported cases). Even Wuhan saw no new confirmed cases or suspected cases. As a piece of supporting evidence, the medical teams sent to Hubei from other provinces, consisting of more than 23，000 doctors and nurses, started to retreat since yesterday. The police concierge escorted Their departures and arrivals, the highest salute usually only enjoyed by the head of states (a short video here). Upon arrival, they will be under quarantine for 14 days at designated hotels to make sure no one is affected by the disease.
For other provinces, life is slowly returning to normal. More than two-thirds of the provinces deescalated the Level 1 Alert of Public Health Emergency. In Shanghai, the Level 1 Alert is maintained, but the enforcement of the rules is less strict than two weeks age. The security guards still check my body temperature when I enter the residential building, but most of the time, he won’t even look at the thermometer. People are still wearing masks, but supermarkets and shopping malls are much more crowded now than in February. Most restaurants restarted business, with half of the tables occupied.
Beijing probably is the only part of China where the enforcement is stricter than early March. Two reasons are behind the curtain. On the one hand, the top leadership regards the capital as a high-risk region and prevent COVID 19 is Job No. 1. On the other hand, an incident in February, where a test-positive prisoner released by a Wuhan prison passing all the road-checks and brought back to her Beijing apartment by her relatives, showed that there were substantial loopholes in the prevention effort of the megacity.
Identifying imported cases is how the key to COVID 19 prevention for China. Beijing has redecorated an exhibition center near the Capital Airport to test international passengers. To further release the pressure, many international flights are diverting to nearby cities, and the confirmed patients will be treated in the landing city. Other cities are also tightening the rules for international arrivals. For instance, Guangdong requires all passengers entering the custom to conduct a 14-day medical observation at home or at designated hotels. Negative opinions emerged at a large number of international arrivals (most of them are Chinese nationals). On the Internet, someone even came up with a joke that these people are bringing back the virus to their hometown. Many people on Weibo repost these ignorant words. The People’s Daily had to write a special op-ed opposing these sentiments, saying that many of those coming back are who went out of their ways to send masks back to China a month ago.
Production restart: on the road, but not easy
The latest data shows that the outbreak seriously impacted the Chinese economy. The YoY growth of the industrial value-added recorded -13.5% in the first two months. The GDP growth in Q1 2020 would likely be negative, the first time in the past 40 years (the economic volume of March is about 60% of Q1 as a whole, and the YoY growth in March needs to reach 7% to avoid negative growth, which is unlikely).
Three reasons are behind the low speed of production restart. First, in the countryside, people are still terrified. Some of them sealed the roads, not allowing others to enter or to pass by. Therefore, many factories in Southern China are in a hard time recruiting workers. Second, many cities were prioritizing the aim of zero-new-cases, and require all arrivals to conduct home observations for 14 days. Third, many citizens are still doubtful in dining in restaurants or enjoy other services in public, which hurts the service sector.
To tackle these problems, many policies are under trial. The latest State Council Meeting chaired by Premier Li Keqiang has prioritized avoiding the massive bankruptcy of small firms, which would lead to massive unemployment. The State Council set up the Inter-Department Mechanism in Production Restart to coordinate the policies of provinces. For instance, it asks the provincial government to accept the health proof (mostly QR codes) issued by other provinces (therefore, workers holding the health proof issued by Province A would not need to undergo the home-observation in Province B). The local governments in Zhejiang even sent buses and rent train carriage to other provinces to bring the workers back to the factories. The deputy mayor Chongqing and a few other colleagues went to a restaurant to eat hotpot, showing the citizens that going out is safe now. We will be able to see whether these policies are useful when the high-frequency data in March are released in early April.
Holding accountable: international pressure makes it harder
The Internet has witnessed several rounds of public opinion turmoil in the past two months, but the sentiment is shifting. It may be an inaccurate description, but those who think and express rationally and logically are a minority in China. And since the Internet substantially lowers the threshold of expressing one’s emotion compared to writing op-eds on a newspaper, popular Weibo posts sometimes reveal the darker side of the general public. In the early days of the outbreak, many are demanding to hold related officials accountable. However, I would suspect that many of those demands are based on the anger of an abnormal Spring Festival. When the normal life returns, their rage will be less intense and maybe easily covered by the sentiment of moving (e.g., moved by the doctors and nurses fighting the disease selflessly).
Taking patriotism into consideration is making the situation much more complicated. I feel that for many people, the mentality is like a father disciplining his child. When a child does something wrong, the father may be angry and even punish the child, but he would feel very unhappy if someone else criticizes or punishes the child. The growing accusation in the international community condemning China as the origination of the disease has made people believe, subconsciously, that there is a trade-off between holding officials accountable and maintaining the national image. This twisted sense of patriotism made many people more and more tolerant of what happened in early January. (If this is a strategy, then it proved very successful.)
The government can always find someone accountable. Since February, we have fired the Party Secretary of Hubei, the Party Secretary of Wuhan, the director-general of Hubei Health Commission, and the police chief who issued the punishment note to Dr. Li Wenliang. Still, these would not improve the system which ordinary people follows. Of course, there will be scholars, journalists, and other conscious people demanding a comprehensive retrospection. Whether the leadership would listen to these voices, a low pitch among the noisy public, is questionable.
