China — The Domino Begins to Sway
Seismic changes often begin long before their impacts are fully felt by society.
Take for example the 2008 financial crisis. Contrary to the popular narrative from economic commentators to the Federal Reserve alike, the disaster did not start with the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Rather, the fate of the financial system was sealed when LIBOR rates (the interest rate banks charge other banks) spiked several months earlier showing that the core intermediaries of the economy, banks, no longer trusted one another.
The first piece of the domino fell long before it brought down the world.
Today, another piece of domino is swaying.
However, just like the tree in the forest, no one is paying enough attention to hear it fall. China’s handling of Covid in Shanghai seems like an isolated event that only affects the citizens of one city; however, its repercussions could kickstart a process that could prove painful for the Chinese economy and might just lead to downfall of Xi’s rising empire, handing over the world stage to the United States and her allies for another half century.
In the early days of the People’s Republic of China, then chairman and leader Mao famously formulated a “Great Leap Forward” designed to turbo-charge the country’s productive capacity and transform its struggling economy into an industrial presence rivaling that of the USSR. As no good deed goes unpunished, inadequate technology combined with the pressure to appear successful eventually led to mass starvation, taking the lives of millions.
Since then, the nation has transformed beyond comprehension. Following the playbook of South Korea and Japan, the country kickstarted its economic engine as a hub for manufacturing and soon soared to unimaginable heights. The slums are replaced with beautiful skyscrapers, the population has been educated to incredible standards, and once the backwaters of Asia became the world’s second largest GDP.
Fast forward to April 2022. Two years after the initial outbreak of Covid-19, most wealthy countries have more or less controlled the virus. The incredible speed of the vaccine’s development helped nations wrestle Covid to a manageable level and life is more or less going back to normal. While people in poorer countries are still dying by the thousands, the rich nations have survived the Delta surge as well as the Omnicron variant (somethings just never change).
Most rich nations, except one: China.
In a stark reversal from their early 2020 performance, the country has struggled to contain the spread of Covid. This may seem odd, given that the country had every reason to succeed; China’s heavy handed lock down at the start of 2020 inflicted horrific humanitarian costs but also proved successful in containing the virus. So successful in fact that a few months later, as the virus ravaged the rest of the world, China was able to reopen and essentially resume business as usual.
Unfortunately local outbreaks soon appeared once more and they were met with heavy handed governmental responses. People were forced to remain at home, only allowed to leave for the purpose of being tested at centralized mass testing facilities.
In these cities, life can be hellish.
Elderly folks and people with disabilities are left helpless in their homes, patients with non-Covid related illnesses are left without medical treatment as all medical forces are ordered to combat Covid, often dying.
A distant friend recently experienced such a fate. His elderly father had suffered a heart attack during lock down and ran out of medicine. The son tried to help but was forced to stay home, screaming desperately as government officials physically restrained him to enforce their lock down orders. All he could do was listen, as his father slowly suffer in agony on the other end of the phone.
His father died alone, in a house only two minutes away.
These tragedies are happening everyday, and if reading such personalized account of the suffering felt a lot more painful than reading bland headlines touting cold statistics, then you are sharing a sentiment that might soon fracture China as we know it.
In early April, an outbreak was detected in Shanghai, the financial heart of China, and the city was quickly placed under lock down per official protocol. The people were assured that they would still be able to receive the basic necessities by ordering online and having them delivered, but panic and confusion created chaos; and amidst the chaos, thieves thrived.
While legitimate businesses were crippled by supply shortages and movement restrictions, “companies” with no licenses or permits moved quickly to bribe officials administering the lock down and roamed freely throughout the city.
These charlatans, unbound by morality or ethics, wreck havoc to the population by selling goods to the elites and leaving garbage to the people. Families who ordered groceries opened their deliveries to find food that were rotting and moldy, parents who ordered baby products received dirty diapers or sometimes nothing at all. As anger lead to desperation and morbid cynicism, people joke about committing crimes just so they might be fed in prison.
This is happening to a city of 26 million souls, to the city that rivals New York, London, and Singapore in terms of economic importance.
In 2022, a major metropolitan city in the world’s second richest country, faces starvation.
In the wake of this butchery, people voiced their anger.
In a country where voices of dissention are often silenced with swift retribution, the very real threat to one’s personal safety as well as fervent online nationalism has led people to adopt a habit of silence, where disagreements are often whispered and never spoken in public.
The “Rape of Shanghai” has broken this custom.
Faced with starvation or dissention, people are dissenting, voicing their suffering and frustration in such volume that the regular filters against free speech are being overwhelmed. In a demonstration of the censor police’s state of absolute desperation, increasing numbers of Shanghai residences have found their WeChat accounts being secretly muted, their messages no longer being displayed in group messaging situations.
See until recently, members of China’s middle class have largely watched the government’s lock down efforts from afar, sending over donations and posting encouragements online yet ultimately safe in the knowledge that the government would never let such terrible fate befall the economically important cities in which they lived.
But then, Shanghai fell.
The city residents’ desperate cries for help and uncontainable rage opened the eyes of millions. While online nationalists are louder than ever, a growing portion of the middle class quietly realized that if the government could treat Shanghai as such, then the cities in which they live were also in danger. The illusion that economic importance would afford them safety was shattered with inhumane brutality. The implicit promise that devoting one’s lifetime to the prosperity of society would in turn earn themselves the right to live in dignity was broken.
Increasingly, one thing is coming to dominate their thinking:
Escape. China.
(In the interest of readability I’ve made the second half into its own article. It will discuss the ramifications of what happened in Shanghai and how the dominos might fall.)
