How Do You Keep China’s Economy Running With 750 Million in Quarantine?

Not just China’s economy. How about all the nations that do so much import business from there?

BEIJING—Returning to China in mid-February, I had seemingly stepped into a parallel universe. Much of Beijing looked, and even smelled, like the familiar metropolis in which I’ve lived for decades. Except for one thing.

Where were all the people?

Meanwhile public trust in the system has been badly shaken, and coming weeks will determine whether the damage is irreparable or not. “Some days I don’t even make enough money to cover fuel costs and the daily 200 RMB [renminbi] I give to the taxi company,” complained Beijing taxi driver Yang Guoning. He said he’d asked the company for a daily subsidy but was told to “wait for the government policy.” What can he do in the meantime? “All I can do is show up for work and take all the precautions,” he said. What precautions? His voice dripped with sarcasm. “Wear a face mask. Disinfect my taxi. Roll down the windows, and get plenty of fresh air—after all, that’s what the government says I must do. What else is there?” He pressed the “down” button to further lower his taxi windows with an exaggerated gesture—and a look of disgust.

Most tragic are recurring reports—most often from Hubei but repeated in some other communities—of an overstressed public health system. Patient care has suffered from overtaxed medical staff, heartless forced quarantines, and shortages of beds, equipment, and diagnostic testing kits. Ailing Chinese were manhandled into strict isolation and then left untended. People suffering from unidentified or non-coronavirus complaints—from HIV/AIDS complications to cancer to injuries from exploding fireworks—were thrown out of hospitals to make way for high-priority novel coronavirus cases.

Such descriptions evoke wartime scenes from a combat triage tent—and that may be no accident. Girding to fight the “demon virus,” Xi himself has likened the anti-epidemic battle to a “people’s war.” The question is what happens if many people no longer believe him and begin to seek private survival strategies. For some, that might mean long delays before resuming work; if pervasive and prolonged, this could deal a body blow to China’s already slowing economy. Worse, others may try to evade their quarantines. The potential for even greater public health catastrophes is sobering.

The Chinese capital has more than 20 million residents. But the coronavirus that burst out of Hubei province—infecting some 79,000 worldwide and killing more than 2,600 (mostly in China)—had almost emptied Beijing’s vast boulevards. I felt as if I’d stumbled onto the set of a post-apocalyptic film. (Though the city confirmed only four coronavirus deaths, everyone was jittery about infection.) In my silent apartment building, 36 pages of warnings, notices, instructions, and lists of fever clinics were taped neatly to the lobby walls, with 11 more in the elevator. They told returnees to Beijing to scan a QR code (leading to a nosy questionnaire) and isolate themselves at home for 14 days.

I was asked some obvious questions: “Have you been to Hubei?” where the provincial capital, Wuhan, was the epicenter of the outbreak. (I haven’t been for years.) Plus less obvious questions, like my ethnic background and “Are you a member of the Communist Party?” I thought: Does being a member of the Chinese Communist Party have anything to do with whether one’s infected or not?

Actually, the party has something to do with everything in China, especially under Xi Jinping—and suddenly, for Xi, that has become a double-edged sword. As president, party head, and top military commander, Xi has consolidated his authority, centralized decision-making, abolished presidential term limits, and promoted his loyalists. People expect Xi, China’s “chairman of everything,” to fix everything when it goes wrong.

And this is an especially critical test for a Communist leader who has steadily gathered power since becoming party head in November 2012, turning himself into the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong, in the eyes of some observers. Now Xi and his party apparatus are scrambling to achieve two ambitions—both urgent but conflicting—at once. Xi must reduce (and hopefully eliminate) new coronavirus deaths and infections swiftly while simultaneously reviving China’s shellshocked economy. Problem is, people can’t get back to business if they’re hunkering in a bunker. Yet kick-starting economic activity is key if Beijing hopes to prevent this viral outbreak from becoming the “black swan” that Xi has always worried about, sabotaging China’s economy and the world’s along with it……..