(I’ve not been following the chinese reaction too much but have heard of their zero covid policy).
So, why are the Chinese doing that? Why can’t they open up like other highly vaccinated countries?
The question as to why a vaccine mandate is not even enforced to precede any reopening has been raised in the following thread:
According to the attached article from the Financial Times, key explanations are a cultural aversiveness to risk and a high vaccine hesitancy risk among the elderly.
A big problem lies in Chinese culture, which is more risk-averse than many other countries when it comes to diseases and vaccines, said Xinran Andy Chen, an analyst at China consultancy Trivium.
While a relatively high vaccine hesitancy rate among China’s elderly population predates the pandemic, the problem has been exacerbated by official messaging about the dangers of Covid over the past two-and-a-half years.
Despite the Communist party’s enormous powers of social control, ordering the elderly to vaccinate is viewed as a step too far, even for Xi, because of fears it would spark “dramatic social resistance”.
“They don’t want to force through a vaccine mandate [but] they can’t afford old people dying. So that is why stringent Covid controls are still in place,” Chen said.
I understand that taking a vaccine is a leap of faith for anybody, but there are reasons why standard testing practices exist to minimize harm and to obtain solid results prior to any mass production and mass rollout. Furthermore, such vaccine hesitancy among the elderly also existed in neighboring Asian countries (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, etc.), but I guess the messaging has been a lot more effective in those countries as the elderly from those countries have high vaccination rates now. I suspect that a number of people in both local and central Chinese governments have chosen to not put up their pants and to not take responsibility, even when no-nonsense decisions were within reach.
Further down in the same article, something has been raised Chinese-made vaccines.
Experts believe that the main Chinese-made vaccines provide high levels of protection from severe illness and death with three doses. But they are less effective and fade faster than the mRNA technology developed by BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna, which are used across the west. The Chinese are also untested in the event of a huge outbreak.
Chen, of Trivium, added that the Chinese government believed the benefits of foreign-made vaccines were outweighed by the political and economic risks.
From Beijing’s point of view, “the cost of losing national pride, the cost of losing market share to a foreign competitor, is much greater than using a marginally better vaccine that is not 100 per cent effective in preventing infection”, he said.
In other words, the government is so afraid of losing face in front of the greater effectiveness of existing Western-made mRNA vaccines that they chose to double down with an approach that has clearly reached its limits because of the nature of the COVID variant. Lockdowns and testing may be beneficial to the elderly, who don't do much in life (no work, no school, no shopping, only hanging around with friends), but this putting a severe burden on working age groups as shown by slower growth and a rise in youth unemployment (20% now). Furthermore, China almost had 2 years to develop plenty of different vaccine types by now.
The sad part is that there will be more tragedies like the Urumqi fire, the severe lockdowns across the country, and the outpouring of anger from the Foxconn employees before things get any better.