skyscraper101
0891 50 50 50
"Face"
Let's talk about China
- Thread starter not-bono-ever
- Start date
"Face"
Thesaint
Active Member
Indeed. Back in 2020 the CCPs approach looked vindicated but ignored a fundamental issue of purely delaying the inevitable, as Sars2 isn't going to vanish from the planet.
That early 'success' makes saving face extra important yet even harder.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
they've no one as good as templeton peck
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
There's also the fact that it was only Wuhan and a few other places that had lockdowns and restrictive measures in much of China for much of 2020, (I read a blog from an English guy in a village he hadn't left in 3 years, saying that he hadnt taken a covid test in 3 years until a few weeks ago where he took 15 in about a week) so much of life in China went on as 'normal' but Xi seems to of gradually expanded it to govern all aspects of life, and the covid policies became more and more untenable with more spreadable variants. I am not a China expert but i also think the communist party seems to like the 'theatre' of arbitrarily locking people down on spurious health grounds too
maomao
普費斯
China Second Railway Bureau, helping Nansha resist the plague.
(Nansha being a district of Guangzhou)
Thesaint
Active Member
I guess pride means they don't want to buy the foreign made alternative(s). I'm not 100% sure but China may have higher vaccine uptake in younger age groups rather than older which is completely the wrong approach and u turning on that is embarrassing, but either way they will have to accept spread and thus case numbers are unavoidable.
Back to saving face again to maintain control.
elbows
Well-Known Member
The 'saving face' thing is a total nightmare. They botched developing a reasonable exit strategy, and that botch has now festered over a long period of time. There are a number of ways they could throw together a new form of face saving that gives them a new exit strategy, but I have absolutely no idea whether they will, how quickly, or the detail they come up with to get there.
The likes of the BBC also make occasional reference to the real health concerns that remain, and sometimes looked at the detail of that. Its estimated not to be a trivial problem. I covered this here #10,861 and in the subsequent post, including a study they linked to from earlier this year. That study was looking at what would happen if there had been a Omicron wave earlier this year if there had been no restrictions, mitigations and large behavioural changes in place at all. So its not what we'd actually expect to see happen because if a situation started to develop where it was actually looking like there would be 5 million hospital admissions, 2.7 million intensive care admissions and 1.6 million deaths then neither the authorities nor the masses would be in full on 'behave completely as normal' mode, they would respond, the psychology of the pandemic would take another turn there.
As the BBC point out, the issue isnt just about who has not had vaccines and how good their vaccines are, its also about a lack of immunity in the population from previous infection. Because the crude version of 'herd immunity' that was touted in countries like the UK went down the shitter, but a more nuanced version is still a factor. For example the likes of 2hats has often posted details of the various studies which have shown that 'hybrid immunity', where a persons immune system has a more effective response to the virus if their history includes both vaccination and infection. And that sort of thing does contribute to the lower magnitude of threat we and many other countries currently face from the virus, but China lacks.
In terms of the lower vaccine uptake rate in older people in China, I wonder about the attitudes of both the authorities and people in general. Do older generations in China generally have less faith in modern medicine and more faith in other approaches for example?
The likes of the BBC also make occasional reference to the real health concerns that remain, and sometimes looked at the detail of that. Its estimated not to be a trivial problem. I covered this here #10,861 and in the subsequent post, including a study they linked to from earlier this year. That study was looking at what would happen if there had been a Omicron wave earlier this year if there had been no restrictions, mitigations and large behavioural changes in place at all. So its not what we'd actually expect to see happen because if a situation started to develop where it was actually looking like there would be 5 million hospital admissions, 2.7 million intensive care admissions and 1.6 million deaths then neither the authorities nor the masses would be in full on 'behave completely as normal' mode, they would respond, the psychology of the pandemic would take another turn there.
As the BBC point out, the issue isnt just about who has not had vaccines and how good their vaccines are, its also about a lack of immunity in the population from previous infection. Because the crude version of 'herd immunity' that was touted in countries like the UK went down the shitter, but a more nuanced version is still a factor. For example the likes of 2hats has often posted details of the various studies which have shown that 'hybrid immunity', where a persons immune system has a more effective response to the virus if their history includes both vaccination and infection. And that sort of thing does contribute to the lower magnitude of threat we and many other countries currently face from the virus, but China lacks.
In terms of the lower vaccine uptake rate in older people in China, I wonder about the attitudes of both the authorities and people in general. Do older generations in China generally have less faith in modern medicine and more faith in other approaches for example?
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
Shanghai Total Lockdown Update, Day 15/04 :《This Content Not Available》
The History of China
Duration: 23:42
Published: Fri, 15 Apr 2022 16:13:00 -0000
Episode: Shanghai Total Lockdown Update, Day 15/04 :《This Content Not Available》 Podcast Republic
Media:
Podcast: The History of China Podcast Republic
<p>Day 15 of 4: An overview of individual accounts of the unfolding Covid lockdown situation in Shanghai, the siege-mentality that has set in, and the struggles of day to day existence both on- and of...
----
Sent from Podcast Republic 22.11.6R
play.google.com
This was about the Shanghai lockdown earlier this year but still relevant
The History of China
Duration: 23:42
Published: Fri, 15 Apr 2022 16:13:00 -0000
Episode: Shanghai Total Lockdown Update, Day 15/04 :《This Content Not Available》 Podcast Republic
Media:
Podcast: The History of China Podcast Republic
<p>Day 15 of 4: An overview of individual accounts of the unfolding Covid lockdown situation in Shanghai, the siege-mentality that has set in, and the struggles of day to day existence both on- and of...
----
Sent from Podcast Republic 22.11.6R
Podcast Republic - Podcast app - Apps on Google Play
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This was about the Shanghai lockdown earlier this year but still relevant
8ball
Merr xmas...
It's def not making them popular.
My team mate in Shanghai (actually a satellite of Shanghai) was all ready for a little downtime visiting family and suchlike when someone in her building tested positive.
All totally kaiboshed.
skyscraper101
0891 50 50 50
There's also the fact that Chinese vaccines are way less effective against Covid than the Western mRNA ones. And they haven't bought in any of those because, again, its all about nationalism and face saving bullshit.
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Thesaint
Active Member
My guess is they instinctively mistrust Beijing through years of abuse but younger folk can't exist, work or simply function without their digital ID pass so mistrusted Beijing the same but couldn't avoid vaccines- I'm not sure of the details of what the pass expects people to do.
I think some countries (maybe Indonesia) tried the vaccinate the young first on the basis the vulnerable would be protected without the economy having to remained shutdown and I presume had to U turn on that idea, so maybe that was an Asian solution mindset or something.
Herd instinct when spooked has a part to play alongside wanting to avoid U turns and not unique to China, although it's harder for them to do it.
The mess China is in now may well impact how many industries or countries can trust them as a supplier of just about everything in the long run if they perpetually lockdown.
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JimW
支那暗杀团
Your health app shows your vaccination status and you do indeed have to have completed a full course for a lot of work environments and accessing other places; work from home so not tried them all, might include public transport but only taken a couple of buses since and they seemed to only glance for the green of a negative PCR test in past three days, which is most prominent.
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
I'm surprised they haven't just stolen the technology, gone on to manufacture, and kept the labelling exactly the same.
Thesaint
Active Member
How do we know sinovac isn't already a partial or wholesale copy? They won't exactly boast if it was then want a refund!
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
That's true.
8ball
Merr xmas...
Because they had a massive head start on development maybe...
Chinese universities send students home amid anti-lockdown protests
Students at Tsinghua University, Xi's alma mater, protested on Sunday along with other schools in Beijing and the southern province of Guangdong - it comes as the government sees its largest protests in decades
www.mirror.co.uk
They are shutting down the universities and sending students to finish the semester online. Presumably a measure to stop more university protests emerging.
JimW
支那暗杀团
Heard a rumour yesterday (and completely mate of a mate) that warning shots were fired to disperse a crowd at Tsinghua.Chinese universities send students home amid anti-lockdown protests
Students at Tsinghua University, Xi's alma mater, protested on Sunday along with other schools in Beijing and the southern province of Guangdong - it comes as the government sees its largest protests in decades
They are shutting down the universities and sending students to finish the semester online. Presumably a measure to stop more university protests emerging.
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
Are there weapons in private hands in China? Hunting rifles etc.
JimW
支那暗杀团
Still a few yes, not too many legitimately but it is possible, especially out in the sticks. Was also told of caches hidden up in the hills that were stolen from army bases during the factional fighting in the Cultural Revolution, though that's hardly going to arm many these days if any still work.
ETA Just checked and think they're all technically illegal now, which wasn't case when i first arrived and apparently some licences are still issued to rural hunting teams in those sort of mountain villages where wild pigs get in the crops etc which was when I first encountered privately owned rifles twenty odd years ago. Fair few nomads I met had access too though doubt the law had much say in the matter.
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elbows
Well-Known Member
Well I'd need to know more about exactly what was said.Just watching an Al Jazeera debate on the zero covid policy, some unbelievable stuff being said by the Chinese government representative'why aren't we talking about Japan with its 40,000 cases?'
Certainly when talking about Chinas covid stance a while before this latest round of increasing protests really got going, I was more than prepared to make a point that I saw both the UK and China as two examples of opposite extremes. I was mostly doing this because I was trying to point out that whilst people over here found it easy to describe Chinas approach as madness, it wasnt actually that hard for those who had seen a very different quantity of deaths so far in their own country during the pandemic to consider our approach to be its own sort of madness too.
Its a complex subject, and I am not taking the regime in Chinas side. Nor do I consider it surprising or weird that in this country people had enough of the acute phases of the pandemic, and long ago stopped paying very much attention to the ongoing deaths. Nor is it surprising that our daily covid death figures dont really hit people hard in comparison to the sort of daily figures we were seeing in this country at the peaks of our first two giant waves. Those numbers made what came later seem small in comparison, and this helped people to move on and think about things differently. But in some other countries things have not happened in this same order in terms of the number of deaths in each wave, in some places subsequent waves have seen an increase in deaths, not a reduced number of deaths.
But I still end up feeling like it would be remiss of me not to point out that ONS figures for England and Wales show 30,937 deaths 'involving covid' and 20,328 'due to covid' so far this year. I am reminded of the start of the pandemic when Vallance said that '20,000 would be a good result' and people were horrified, oh how our standards have changed. So its not really surprising that the likes of China are going to want to point to that sort of thing when attempting to justify their own approach, or for example make use of graphs such as this one from Worldometer that shows covid deaths recorded as such in Japan:
From Japan COVID - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer
So as I said, I think its a complex subject. With variations in how governments, media organisations and populations either came to terms with a certain amount of covid death, or not. Our media are certainly not drawing attention to how many deaths we've had this year are they, and I doubt people are too keen on me pointing this sort of number out from time to time. And just because large numbers of people here were able to normalise a certain amount of death, were able to accept our own version of 'learning to live with covid' just as our government hoped, doesnt mean that all other ways to frame things are somehow invalid everywhere on the planet.
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frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
Why is China persisting with its strict zero-COVID policy? Here you are elbows
I agree lifting all restrictions suddenly would probably be ill advised and that the Chinese government seem to have handled covid better than the UK etc in the early stages but I don't really think it ie even about covid now for Xi Jinping etc.. You need a negative test to even get near a hospital according to a lot of the things I've read. And obviously people are going to try and game the system, there are reportedly papers that some people have been able to sign to pass them off as having negative tests etc
I agree lifting all restrictions suddenly would probably be ill advised and that the Chinese government seem to have handled covid better than the UK etc in the early stages but I don't really think it ie even about covid now for Xi Jinping etc.. You need a negative test to even get near a hospital according to a lot of the things I've read. And obviously people are going to try and game the system, there are reportedly papers that some people have been able to sign to pass them off as having negative tests etc
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
I think all this was kicked off from reports in China's media that they were going to loosen some restrictions, but the lockdowns ended up getting worse due to rising infections. And the current Chinese strategy clearly isn't working because the numbers of cases and deaths are rising.
Seems very arbitrary too, and the practice of stopping people going to places etc seems pretty much designed to actually spread the virus itself at some point - this article describes how someone was forced to stay in a hotel rather than go back home, with nobody wearing masks
Seems very arbitrary too, and the practice of stopping people going to places etc seems pretty much designed to actually spread the virus itself at some point - this article describes how someone was forced to stay in a hotel rather than go back home, with nobody wearing masks
moochedit
I'm not feeding seagulls
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
Did he have much of a public profile? I had a look on twitter and there's some suspicions around his death
moochedit
I'm not feeding seagulls
Given his age his heart probably packed in when he heard about the protests.Did he have much of a public profile? I had a look on twitter and there's some suspicions around his death
JimW
支那暗杀团
Always had his trousers pulled up to nearly round his nipples, current regime probably feared his pantaloon powers. Not much of a following I don't think, his time will look better in hindsight but he introduced his share of Strike Hard crackdowns and the Three Represents was seen as risible at the time, though in retrospect formally allowing property speculators into the Party was something of a watershed.
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