Category: Covid19

In this article for Global Times, Roland Boer – Professor of Marxist Philosophy at Dalian University of Technology, China, and member of the Friends of Socialist China advisory group – analyses the most recent updates to China’s diagnosis and treatment protocol for Covid-19.

Roland opines that, to a significant degree, China has set the ‘gold standard’ in terms of dealing with the pandemic. For three years, while more virulent mutations of the virus were circulating, China adopted extreme measures in order to protect people’s lives – an expression of the CPC-led government’s philosophy that “people come first, and life comes first.” These measures prevented literally millions of deaths, with the result that China’s rate of Covid-related deaths is among the lowest in the world.

Now, however, extensive and continuing investigation by China’s scientists – in coordination with their counterparts around the world – indicates that conditions exist for moving the coronavirus to endemic status. Thus it is now considered as seasonal and non-threatening, given the relatively low virulence of the dominant Omicron strains, China’s high level of vaccination, and the growing pool of treatment options.

Roland also notes that the government and health authorities have carefully learned the lessons of the last three years and that “China’s health system has seen impressive improvement” in response.

On January 6, 2023, China’s National Health Commission (NHC) and National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine issued China’s 10th edition of its diagnosis and treatment protocol for novel coronavirus infection. This is the NHC’s first national guiding protocol after China announced to downgrade management of COVID from Class A to Class B from January 8. Two items are worth noting here: the definition has changed from “novel coronavirus pneumonia” to “novel coronavirus infection” and its classification is now at a “B” level. The classification has significant implications for the measures taken to deal with the virus, but a question arises: Has China “lain down” before the virus, has it given up on dealing with it? The answer is a resounding no. Instead, China is the first country in the world to move from the coronavirus being a pandemic to it being endemic. This point needs some explanation.

First, for a little over three years I have been closely following China’s approach in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. The results have been nothing less than stunning: the number of per capita infections and deaths are at the lowest level in the world, life expectancy has increased during this time, and the dialectic of economic development and public health has been managed very well. 

The health of the population has not been significantly compromised – as has happened in some other countries – by the earlier and more toxic mutations of the virus, and the level of full vaccinations among the population above 3 years old is over 90 percent. In many respects, China has set a new “gold standard” for dealing with a pandemic. As one example, I have noted the huge amount of discussion with each revision of the measures for dealing with the pandemic, seeing how medical specialists and scientists were dealing daily with the many questions people had. The specialists were always “on message,” seeking to explain the content, connotations, implications, and reasons behind each revision of the measures. Friends and colleagues in China gave me regular updates concerning the experiences with their own families, their workplaces, their concerns, and – most importantly – their hopes.

Continue reading Roland Boer: Stepping out of the pandemic, Chinese style

The following report on the optimisation of Covid-19 response measures in China has been provided to us by our comrades at the International Department of the Communist Party of China. It provides a comprehensive description of the changes that have been introduced in the last few months, along with a clear explanation of the rationale behind those changes.

The report points out that the success of China’s Dynamic Zero Covid strategy has meant that “the infection rate and fatality in China have been kept at the lowest level globally”. The extraordinarily low infection rate over three years has given China’s healthcare system, epidemiologists and medical researchers time to better understand the virus, to develop vaccines and treatments, and to prepare medical facilities and supplies.

The authors note that, “in the light of the marked decline of the pathogenicity and virulence in Omicron and the steady rise of China’s capacity for medical treatment, pathogen detection and vaccination, China has taken the initiative to refine its Covid-19 response measures.” The essence of the changes is to shift focus from preventing infection to preventing severe cases and fatality, whilst at the same time allowing a return to some level of normality for the bulk of the population.

The major changes described in the report are: 1) An end to routine compulsory PCR testing; 2) An end to hospital quarantine for asymptomatic and mild cases; 3) An end to nucleic acid test and health code requirements for public spaces (other than schools, nursing homes and medical facilities); and 4) a re-opening of borders to international travellers.

These changes do not constitute an adoption of the type of “laissez-faire” or “let it rip” approach being implemented in the West. The new measures are being adopted in an orderly fashion in response to changing reality, most notably the reduced virulence of the dominant Omicron variant, and China’s high level of vaccination coverage (92 percent). Beijing, Guangzhou and other cities have already passed the peak of infection and are gradually returning to normal – without having experienced high levels of severe illness and death.

The report concludes by citing China’s contribution to international cooperation against the pandemic – “China shared COVID-19 prevention, control and treatment protocols with more than 180 countries and international organisations, dispatched 38 medical expert teams to 34 countries, and provided over 2.2 billion doses of vaccines for 120 plus countries and international organisations” – and calling for continued mutual learning and close cooperation between the countries of the world.

Over the past three years, the COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc around the globe and posed enormous challenges to all countries including China. In 2020 when this public health emergency first broke out, the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Chinese government made a decisive decision to categorise COVID-19 as a Class-B infectious disease that would be subject to the preventive and control measures for a Class-A infectious disease in accordance with the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Prevention and Treatment of Infectious Diseases. The strict management of the disease has enabled China to pull through the difficult times when the virus was wreaking havoc and to withstand multiple global waves. It has also helped buy precious time for the research, development and application of vaccines and therapeutics and getting medical supplies ready, thus minimising the number of severe cases and mortality, and greatly protecting the health and safety of the people.

The global COVID-19 situation has changed significantly. In the light of the marked decline of the pathogenicity and virulence in Omicron and the steady rise of China’s capacity for medical treatment, pathogen detection and vaccination, China has taken the initiative to refine its COVID-19 response measures. We have adopted in an orderly fashion the 20 refined measures and 10 new measures, and decided to manage COVID-19 with measures against Class-B instead of the more serious Class-A infectious diseases, shifting the focus of our response from “stemming infection” to “protecting health and preventing severe cases”. We aim to better adapt our response measures to the new development in the epidemic and features of new mutations, effectively coordinate COVID-19 response and socioeconomic development, protect the safety and health of the people to the maximum extent possible, and restore normalcy to people’s work and life. The shift is science-based, timely and necessary.

Continue reading Backgrounder: Optimisation of Covid-19 response measures in China

In this important and in-depth article, Tings Chak, researcher and the art director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and co-founding member of the Dongsheng collective, provides a detailed description of China’s evolving strategy for managing Covid-19, from December 2019 until today. Having lived in China since March 2020, Tings has witnessed each phase of China’s approach at close quarters.

Countering the endlessly repeated claims in the Western media that the recent adjustments and loosening of restrictions (since November 2022) are “chaotic” and will inevitably lead to vast numbers of deaths, Tings writes that “China has used the last three years to try to prepare itself the best that it can by vaccinating the people, studying the virus, building medical infrastructure, training workers, and waiting until a much less deadly strain had emerged.”

In the last two months, there have been outbreaks in several major cities, but the government and health authorities have responded quickly and effectively, for example distributing antipyretic medication for free, ramping up production, and exploring various measures to encourage older people to get vaccinated. There has been no major increase in fatal illness from Covid, and, “in Beijing where I live, people are back and bundled in the streets, at work, and on the subways, with traffic and travel recovering.”

The article was first published in MR Online.

I arrived in Shanghai, 36 hours after leaving São Paulo, a near deportation in South Africa, and a canceled connecting flight. It was March 21, 2020. In the following days, China implemented its mandatory centralized quarantine for all international travelers. Exactly a week later, on March 28, China started its travel ban¹ to prevent the spread of a still little-known virus called Covid-19, which was making its way to all corners of the earth.

Nearly three years later, on the coming January 8, 2023², China will officially open its borders, remove the mandatory quarantine and nucleic acid tests for people entering the country, and downgrade the management of Covid-19 from Class A to Class B³. It is not an end of an era; rather, it is a continuation of a rigorous process of confronting a historic and global pandemic, while putting science and the people at its center. It has been an incredible experience to see how the Chinese government and people have taken on this pandemic, while the world has suffered⁴ 6.68 million recorded deaths, with over 650 million people infected. The impact of this virus is one for the history books, the lasting effects to be studied for years to come, and the fight has not yet ended.

The Western mainstream media, however, has been quick to criticize China every step of the way, from the “draconian⁵” Zero-Covid strategy to the “dystopian⁶” measures to ensure a safe Winter Olympics games in Beijing, and now to the “nightmare⁷” of relaxing the country’s Covid-19 requirements. Rhetoric aside, what has the fight against the virus been like in China—characterized by the Zero-Covid strategy—and why are the relaxation measures happening now? It is important to look back at the last three years to understand how we arrived at this point today. Having lived in China throughout the ebbs and flows of the Covid-19 virus, I would categorize the country’s dynamic strategy into four key phases.

Phase 1: Emergency response (December 2019 to May 2020)

Two-and-a-half weeks after I arrived in China, on April 8, the country celebrated the end to the 76-day historic lockdown in Wuhan, where the pandemic first broke out and claimed the lives of 4,512 Chinese people⁸. It was an emotional and bittersweet victory for the entire country, which had mobilized its people and resources to fight a very deadly and never-before-seen virus.

On December 26, 2019, Dr. Zhang Jixian⁹, director of the Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine of Hubei Province hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, saw an elderly couple that had a high fever and a cough—symptoms that characterize the flu. But further examination ruled out influenza A and B, mycoplasma, chlamydia, adenovirus, and SARS. She and her team then quickly determined there was a new virus at play. Three days later, the provincial authorities were alerted, then the Chinese Center for Disease Control (CDC) and by December 31 the WHO was informed¹⁰. On New Year’s Day, the CDC officials called¹¹ Dr. Robert Redfield, head of the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, while he was on vacation, to inform him of the severity of their findings.

Continue reading A look back on three years of China’s anti-Covid-19 fight

The following article by Scott Scheffer, originally published in Struggle/La Lucha, assesses the hypocritical and purposefully disingenuous reporting in the Western media regarding the recent Covid protests in China.

Scott points out that several outlets are guilty of massively exaggerating the scale of the protests in order to paint it as an emerging “color revolution”. In truth however, “this brief series of protests was not the mass uprising against the leadership of China that the US capitalist class and their loyal media salivate over.”

The author recognizes that, in spite of China’s unparalleled success in mitigating the effects of the pandemic and keeping the number of fatalities remarkably low, after almost three years there is now a level of frustration in relation to some of the more severe Covid measures, particularly lockdowns, mandatory quarantine and daily PCR testing. Indeed, the government has been gradually rolling out policy updates that reflect both the shifting mentality and the evolution of the virus itself. These policy changes were announced even before the recent tragedy in Urumqi, which was a key trigger for the protests.

Scott rightly concludes that “socialist planning and science saved tens of millions of lives in China and will keep China on the right path as the virus ebbs and flows.”

The opportunism of the major U.S. media was on full display in late November over the protests against China’s anti-COVID lockdowns. The protests began in the Xinjiang city of Urumqi after a terrible fire took the lives of 10 people on Nov. 24. People in the district responded to the tragedy by protesting the lockdown that had gone into effect after a COVID outbreak in late summer. 

The protests occurred in somewhere between 15 and 20 cities, including Beijing and Shanghai. The numbers reported by the U.S. press were purposely vague. The liberal PBS claimed thousands in a Nov. 29 headline and then “tens of thousands” in the article. Some reports indicated hundreds in Shanghai, and many pieces didn’t estimate crowd size at all. 

For context, there are about 60 cities of a million people or larger in China, and about 20% of the world lives in China. So even if the claim by PBS of “tens of thousands” is true, this brief series of protests was not the mass uprising against the leadership of China that the U.S. capitalist class and their loyal media salivate over. 

Hoping the protests would mark the beginning of their long-desired “color revolution” in China, the U.S. media’s elation got the best of them and led to the overblown coverage. But the hyperventilating reportage wasn’t limited to slander. There are reports of Western journalists using Telegram channels to guide “activists” from Hong Kong and Taiwan to the locations of some of the protests. 

When the “color revolution” failed to materialize, their giddy predictions gave way to another distortion of the facts. They claimed the CCP is being pushed by the momentum of the protests to ease its COVID policy, which they claim is the result of Xi’s authoritarianism and his desire to always be correct regardless of consequences. 

Continue reading Zero Covid: Don’t be deceived by US reports on the protests in China

This short but informative article by British economist Michael Roberts addresses the current wave of media claims that China is heading into a major Covid-19 surge as a result of the recent slight relaxation of its dynamic Zero Covid policy (ironically, the same media outlets have been demanding China drop this “authoritarian” policy for the last three years).

Michael observes that case numbers, while high relative to a few weeks ago, are still very low compared to other countries in the region; “the current number of serious cases (requiring ICU intervention) – 108 in total – is tiny”; and there have only been seven Covid deaths in China in the last six months.

China is evolving its strategy in line with its hard-won experience tackling the virus over the last three years, as well as the relatively lower severity of the Omicron variant and China’s vaccination rate (around 90 percent).

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning summed it up well recently: “What has happened in the past few years shows that China’s COVID policy has provided maximum protection to people’s lives and health, minimized COVID’s impact on socioeconomic development, and bought precious time for understanding the virus on the basis of science, for research and development of vaccines and therapeutics, and for vaccinating more people across the country. China has the lowest COVID infection rate and death toll among all major countries. We have achieved the most effective results at minimum cost. As has been proven by facts, China’s approach to COVID response over the past few years has been right, science-based and effective.”

Is China heading for an uncontrolled COVID infection surge as it relaxes its strict lockdown policy, as is claimed by the Western media here?

SOME FACTS: China is going through its third major wave of infections, with around 4,000 new (symptomatic) cases a day of late.

But relative to its huge population this is nothing like what’s being experienced elsewhere in north Asia.

Crucially, the current number of serious cases (requiring ICU intervention) in China — 108 in total — is tiny; as elsewhere, that’s around 90% below the peak of previous waves. And only 7 people have died from (with?) the disease in China in the last 6 months.

While global fatalities have dropped to around 1,500 a day (again, 90% below the peak), it’s ironic that those countries with the highest vaccination rates are currently reporting the highest fatality levels. China’s vaccination rates, for what it’s worth, are in the middle of the pack.

Since the start of the pandemic overall Covid-19 fatalities relative to population barely register for China — the US has had almost a thousand times more.

And China’s Covid-19 fatality rate, now falling fast, is in line with other large EMs:

So while there are the usual caveats about the quality/reliability of the data, at the moment there’s no indication that, epidemiologically at least, things are out of control. If we start to see infection rates accelerate exponentially (Chinese New Year seems to be an obvious risk) the story might change. But at the moment rates are fairly steady.

The following Morning Star editorial takes a look at the recent protests in various Chinese cities calling for an end to Covid lockdowns. The author correctly frames the discussion on China’s dynamic Zero Covid strategy in terms of its actual public health outcomes, in particular its effectiveness in preventing death. “British citizens have been 257 times more likely to die from Covid than Chinese. The fact that this disparity is treated as irrelevant by most commentators says something unpleasant about how little our society values the lives of vulnerable and elderly people.”

Clearly, China’s management of the pandemic has saved millions of lives, and yet, “to an excitable Western commentariat loyally plugging the new cold war line set in Washington, Beijing’s zero-Covid policy is evidence of its paranoid authoritarianism.” Ironically, this “authoritarian” government seems to be responding to rising popular sentiment in favour of loosening Covid restrictions by, well, loosening Covid restrictions. Readers in the West may wish their governments were so responsive to popular opposition to austerity and war.

Establishment media have seized on protests over Covid lockdowns to rehearse their favourite anti-China narratives.

Ever since the world’s first Covid outbreak in Wuhan, the virus has been used as a stick to beat China.

Donald Trump cynically portrayed the pandemic as a Chinese weapon — “the worst attack we’ve ever had on our country … worse than Pearl Harbour.”

Trump’s ravings were seldom taken seriously even by US allies. But the resurrection of the “lab leak” conspiracy theory by the Joe Biden administration made it respectable, and the judgement of a World Health Organisation scientific team, that the virus likely evolved in bats and was “extremely unlikely” to have originated in a laboratory, was howled down.

As one British member of the team complained, “it’s disappointing to spend time with journalists explaining key findings … to see our colleagues selectively misquoted to fit a narrative that was prescribed before the work began.”

Since Western governments have moved on from Covid, the focus has shifted from trying to blame China for the virus to attacking its zero-Covid policy.

Clearly resumed lockdowns are causing genuine anger in some places. The Chinese government has recognised the problems caused by a “one size fits all” approach: reminding authorities in Henan’s capital Zhengzhou for example of the exceptions that need to be made to stay-home orders and rebuking police in Anhui for over-strict enforcement of quarantine.

Continue reading Zero Covid and the protests in China

In the below article, originally published by FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting), Jim Naureckas takes the New York Times to task for yet another of its regular attacks on China’s highly effective Zero Covid policy. He notes that if the Chinese government had followed the same policies as its US counterpart regarding the pandemic, and got the same results, then four and a half million people would have died. As China did not follow the US example, the country has experienced 15,000 deaths – the majority from a spring 2022 outbreak in Hong Kong, which has a different medical and social system to the mainland. Meanwhile, the US has suffered more than a million Covid deaths – and with a current fatality rate of around 450 per day is set to lose around 160,000 more people this year if present trends continue.

Jim notes that nowhere in the New York Times article under review is there any comparison of the respective national death tolls or any hint that the USA’s life expectancy has now dropped below that of China. And whilst the article (like many others of its type in the western media) claims that China’s determination to suppress the virus has triggered an economic crisis, the author notes that in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, China’s economy grew by 2.4% while the USA’s shrank by 3.4%. The USA’s economy is projected to grow by 1.3% this year. However, Goldman Sachs projects 3.0% growth for China.

Four and a half million people.

That’s how many Chinese people would have died from Covid-19 had its government taken the same approach to the pandemic that the United States has taken, and gotten the same results.

Instead, China has had 15,000 deaths from Covid—most of these from an outbreak in the spring of 2022 in Hong Kong, which has its own healthcare system.

Meanwhile, the United States has lost more than a million people to Covid since the pandemic began. Deaths currently continue at the rate of about 450 a day, which would add up to roughly 160,000 a year if present trends continue.

Continue reading NYT scolds China for not ‘learning to live’ – or die – with Covid

The following article by John V Walsh, republished from Popular Resistance, debunks various misconceptions about China’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and contrasts China’s performance with that of the US. Walsh observes that the deaths per million figure in the US currently stands at 3,042; for China the figure is 3.7. So on this metric – surely the most meaningful in terms of assessing a given country’s public health response to a pandemic – China has outperformed the US by a factor of over 800. Anticipating the usual cries of “you can’t trust the Chinese numbers”, Walsh links to numerous articles in the scientific literature confirming the validity of China’s statistics.

While China clearly pursued a strategy that prioritized human life over corporate profits, the author notes that, ironically, China’s economy has also fared far better than the US’s since the start of the pandemic. Walsh concludes that the Chinese experience “should not be lightly dismissed let alone be the subject of mean-spirited attacks” since the measures taken “may be a means of saving millions of lives when the next variant or the next pandemic strikes”.

Covid Deaths In The US (Over 1 Million) And China (About 5000).

“History Should Judge Us” – and it will.

In May and June of 2022 two milestones were passed in the world’s battle with Covid and were widely noted in the press, one in the US and one in China.  They invite a comparison between the two countries and their approach to combatting Covid-19.

The first milestone was passed on May 12 when  the United States registered over 1 million total deaths (1,008,377 as of June 19, 2022, when this is written) due to Covid, the highest of any country in the world.  Web MD expressed its sentiment in a piece headlined: “US Covid Deaths Hit 1 Million: ‘History Should Judge Us.’”

Second, on June 1, China emerged from its 60-day lockdown in Shanghai in response to an outbreak there, the most serious since the Wuhan outbreak at the onset of the pandemic.  The total number of deaths in Mainland China since the beginning of the epidemic in January 2020 now stands at a total of 5226 as of June 19,2022.

To put that in perspective, that is 3042 deaths per million population in the US versus 3.7 deaths in China due to Covid.  3042 vs. 3.7!  Had China followed the same course as the US, it would have experienced at least 4 million deaths.  Had the US followed China’s course it would have had only 1306 deaths total!

The EU did not fare not much better than the US with 2434 deaths per million as of June 19.

Continue reading Comparing the response to Covid-19 in China and the US