Category: Covid19

We are pleased to republish this insightful article by Ian Goodrum in China Daily discussing the recent Covid-19 outbreak in Shanghai and questioning the logic and motives of those in the West claiming that China’s dynamic Zero Covid strategy is unsustainable.

There’s no denying Shanghai is going through hard times.

As a local COVID-19 outbreak has grown there, so have the measures to keep it in check. Residents in some areas have been in lockdown for weeks, and the whole city has been at a standstill since the beginning of the month. Daily case counts there have eclipsed the peaks in Wuhan at the start of the pandemic, and the city has yet to see a drop for several days. At present, tens of thousands of new cases are being reported every 24 hours. We can only hope those figures start to change and the city can overcome this dark moment together.

But along with these troubling numbers come familiar refrains from a chorus we know all too well. Just as they did in previous waves, corporate media outlets are practically foaming at the mouth in their rush to declare the end of China’s zero-COVID policy. We heard this with last year’s Delta variant, we heard it as Omicron began its reign as the dominant strain, we’ve heard it since the enormity of the US and Europe’s epidemic control failure was impossible to ignore. They’ve been singing the same tune for so long the record’s not just broken, it’s fused to the phonograph.

As always, these people are either willfully ignorant or pushing an agenda, and that’s a distinction without a difference these days. Yes, the situation in Shanghai is dire, but China is a big country. There are plenty of cities that have had their own Omicron outbreaks but made it through with minimal consequences. Shenzhen, for example — an international hub in its own right and a massive population center — nipped Omicron in the bud with an early lockdown and a mass mobilization of personnel to handle testing and supply delivery. Qingdao, Tianjin, Dongguan and many other places have been able to tamp down this supposedly unavoidable variant with relative ease.

Meanwhile, virologists and epidemiologists based in the West are on the verge of tearing their hair out. Despite their warnings, an apparent mass delusion is taking hold of populations there, spurred by governments, corporations and media that want a return to business as usual. Now that danger to the wealthy has dropped to practically nil, and those most vulnerable to infection have been pushed back to work in face-to-face service jobs by the expiration of pandemic benefits, it’s been decided oh-so-conveniently that COVID is over.

Continue reading Ian Goodrum: Shanghai’s situation is grim, but Omicron is not ‘unstoppable’

In this timely article, which we reproduce from CGTN, Keith Lamb asks why the major capitalist countries refuse to learn from China’s tackling of Covid-19, “when China’s methods have proven to be among the most successful”. The answers, Lamb observes, highlight “precisely why capitalists should not be given the key to the state apparatus”.

Why are we unable to grasp even the basic lessons from recent history? Overall, looking at COVID-19 responses, China’s methods have proven to be among the most successful. When COVID-19 broke out, swift lockdowns saved millions of lives; grassroots resident groups instantly manned checkpoints in and out of large residential areas, checking temperatures, and apps tracking COVID-19 swiftly followed.

Residents were not cowered into their homes and it wasn’t the humanitarian “hell-scape” made out in the Western press. Even before official restrictions came into place, residents voluntarily isolated en masse. I can say this with confidence because I was in China, not just in one province but three.

When it comes to COVID-19 deaths per million, China’s loss is three, compared to the U.S. at 2,989 and the UK at 2,393. Thus, when it comes to protecting life, the words “horror” hardly applies to China yet, not learning from even recent history, as China now battles new outbreaks of COVID-19, using its “dynamic zero-COVID-19” strategy, this is precisely the sort of language the Western corporate press is using. Even in more measured reporting where language describing China’s strategy as “brutal” and “extreme” is not being used, China’s COVID-19 strategy is predicted to bring economic woes.

Continue reading Covid-19: Why can’t we learn from China instead of lecturing it?

Friends of Socialist China co-editor Danny Haiphong analyzes the significance of the US approaching 1 million Covid-19 deaths by Spring 2022. He concludes that the US has given up on the fight against the pandemic, a move rooted in more than two years of capitalist negligence. The biggest tragedy of all is that ordinary Americans have been stripped of their capacity to learn from and implement China’s effective covid-19 response within their own context. The article was originally published in CGTN on 11 February 2022.

The United States has been one of the most dangerous places to contract COVID-19 since the pandemic began two years ago. The current number of U.S. deaths to COVID-19 is estimated to be 908,000 and trending upward. Hospital beds, healthcare workers, and protective equipment remain in short supply. Both the U.S. political establishment and media continue to spread misinformation about the virus and demonize China to deflect attention from their self-inflicted pandemic disaster. Recent epidemiological forecasts predict that the United States will reach one million COVID-19 deaths by the end of the winter.

These troubling trends do not seem to bother the current political leadership in the United States. Several states are easing public health measures such as mask requirements. The New York Times front page on February 5 ran job growth as its top story while placing at the bottom an announcement that the U.S. had reached 900,000 COVID-19 deaths. The Times concluded that Americans are simply moving on from COVID-19. This contradicts U.S. President Joe Biden’s campaign message that 100,000 COVID-19 deaths were too many when the U.S. reached this milestone in May 2020.

Continue reading US enters dangerous era as it approaches one million Covid-19 deaths

We’re pleased to republish this report from Workers World about the Chinese translation of the book Capitalism on a Ventilator — The Impact of COVID-19 in China & the US. The book contains chapters written by numerous left and anti-imperialist voices including Mumia Abu-Jamal, Lee Siu Hin, Margaret Kimberley, Vijay Prashad, Ngo Thanh Nhan, Ajamu Baraka, Max Blumenthal, Kevin Zeese, Margaret Flowers and Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez. We posted a review of the book here.

We have very exciting news! The Chinese translation of “Capitalism on a Ventilator — The Impact of COVID-19 in China & the U.S.” — originally published in 2020 by World View Forum as a joint project of the International Action Center and China-U.S. Solidarity Network — is out and being discussed in China. 

Contemporary China Publishers, the publisher of the Chinese translation, has planned a big rollout. We’ve received word that, based on high recommendations, hundreds of bookstores and online sellers are interested in carrying the Chinese translation of the book.

“Capitalism on a Ventilator” was co-edited by Sara Flounders, Workers World contributing editor and co-coordinator of the International Action Center, and Lee Siu Hin, director of the China-U.S. Solidarity Network, who has been involved in the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance. 

Continue reading Chinese translation of ‘Capitalism on a Ventilator’ making waves in China

Following a recent outbreak of 127 cases of COVID-19, Xi’an, the ancient capital of China and home to the Terracotta Warriors, has become the latest lockdown as a part of China’s “zero COVID” strategy. Despite being the most populous country on Earth and the first to face the disease, China has been one of the greatest success stories in the fight against COVID, achieving not only one of the lowest death rates in the world, but sustaining sharp economic growth while many Western countries have stagnated.

The global fight against the pandemic has now turned into a tale of two systems. Socialist China, which has a planned economy and is able to combine state intervention with grassroots mobilisation to prioritise human need, has only had 4,639 deaths from the disease since the pandemic began, and only two deaths on the mainland throughout the whole of 2021 (Hong Kong and Taiwan have different systems of government and had 64 deaths and 843 deaths respectively). Meanwhile, as two major centres of global capitalism and neoliberalism, the US and the UK have so far had 859,046 and 150,056 deaths apiece from the pandemic, mostly among the poor and working class. Between them, these two countries now have over half the active COVID cases in the world.

Continue reading “Everyone’s happy to do their part”: interview with a Xi’an resident in lockdown

It’s been a year since the last death from Covid in China, yet the Western media continues to claim China’s Zero Covid strategy is “unsustainable”. Compared with the West, however, China’s strategy looks decidedly sustainable.

Covid in the US

• Nearly 900,000 deaths due to pandemic
• Every state has suffered multiple major outbreaks
• Epidemic of Long Covid affecting millions
• Elderly and vulnerable people still having to limit social contact
• 63 percent of population fully vaccinated
• Hoarded vaccine doses, perpetuating global vaccine apartheid
• Millions have fallen deeper into poverty

Covid in China

• Fewer than 5,000 deaths due to the pandemic
• Hubei the only province to experience severe outbreak
• Very few people suffering with Long Covid
• Virus is under control so people are able to live ordinary lives
• 87 percent of population fully vaccinated
• Exported over 2 billion vaccine doses, prioritising Global South
• Poverty alleviation program continues uninterrupted

It's been a year since the last death from Covid-19 in China. In that time, hundreds of thousands have died from the pandemic in the West. And yet the Guardian, the New York Times and others continue to complain that China's strategy is "authoritarian" and "unsustainable." pic.twitter.com/ATt11CKTqI

— Friends of Socialist China (@socialist_china) January 26, 2022

We are pleased to reproduce this detailed comparison by Rosa Astra and Benjamin Zinevich in Liberation News of the Covid-19 containment measures taken by China and the US. The article describes the decisive steps taken by the Chinese government to suppress the pandemic; debunks the various ‘cover-up’ conspiracy theories; and contrasts the US’s disastrous failure to manage the pandemic with what has been achieved in China – “a system that values human lives over corporate profits”.

As the Omicron variant causes record levels of infection in the United States, the end of the pandemic seems as far away as ever. But far from preparing a robust response to defeat the virus, the Biden administration is preparing to surrender and encourage the public to “learn to live with” COVID indefinitely. 

When the Party for Socialism and Liberation pointed out the fact that China has in fact succeeded at virtually eliminating deaths from the virus, we were attacked by far-right pundits like Ben Shapiro – who took the position that such a feat is essentially impossible and asserted that China’s achievement was just a massive falsification. 

Lives lost to COVID in 2021

415,000
2

— Party for Socialism and Liberation (@pslnational) January 1, 2022

In the United States, which has seen more deaths from the disease than any other country on Earth, there were 476,863 new deaths in 2021, up from 370,777 in 2020.[1] However, it is in fact widely accepted that only two people died of the disease in China in 2021 on the mainland, plus 64 deaths in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and 843 in Taiwan (where the central government of China does not exercise control) – according to the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering COVID-19 Data Repository.[2] This brings China up to a total of 4,636 deaths in the mainland and 5,699 deaths overall since the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic, most of which occurred in the first few months of 2020.

Continue reading One virus, two systems: contrasting approaches in socialist China and capitalist United States

This article by Keith Lamb, originally published in CGTN, counters the Western media’s critique of China’s Zero Covid strategy and of the comprehensive virus suppression measures currently being enforced in the city of Xi’an. The author points out that the Covid death rate in the US has been almost a thousand times as high as in China; on that basis it would surely be appropriate to learn from China’s experience and to cooperate with it in tackling the pandemic.

With the total number of new COVID-19 cases since December 9 reaching 1,573 in Xi’an, capital of Shaanxi Province, local and central government, backed by voluntary citizen support, are doing everything in their power to extinguish the epidemic. China’s Vice Premier Sun Chunlan has advocated for decisive and resolute measures to curb the outbreak, and, in response, the local government has backed up her words with concrete action.

With all of Xi’an’s approximately 13 million residents under lockdown, supply chains have been kept efficient to ensure that essential items such as food and medicine are available to all, especially those in need. Ten medical teams and a 24-hour hotline provide treatment to those isolated. Donations of food and supplies are not just pouring in from neighboring local governments but private citizens too.

Continue reading Xi’an’s Covid response: Preserving human life is preserving freedom

This insightful article by Radhika Desai, originally published in CGTN, seeks to understand why the advanced capitalist countries – particularly the most neoliberal and financialized ones – have performed so poorly in the face of Covid-19; and why socialist countries have done so much better.

As the world marked the second International Day for Epidemic Preparedness (IDEP) on December 27, 2021, nothing is clearer than the world’s richest and most powerful countries’ un-readiness before the pandemic. The highly transmissible Omicron was causing flight delays and cancellations by infecting flight crews, especially in the U.S.

Why are the richest countries doing so badly against the virus? It is not just that they have hogged available vaccine supply, giving second and third doses, while the virus rages and mutates elsewhere. It is not just that they have left China to donate 600 million vaccine doses to Africa even as the U.S. leads a new Cold War with it, dividing the world, rather than participating in any united world effort against the pandemic.

The fact is that the pandemic has turned out to be a tale of two systems. The world’s richest countries, led by the most neoliberal and financialized ones, the U.S. and the UK, have performed abysmally while socialist countries, led by China, have performed far better.

Continue reading Radhika Desai: The pandemic has turned out to be a tale of two systems

This article from Danny Haiphong, first published in CGTN, discusses key recent developments in the Covid pandemic, including the emergence of the Omicron variant and the announcement of a lockdown in the Chinese city of Xi’an. Danny notes that China’s strategy of early detection, mass testing, quarantine and properly-supported lockdowns continues to represent a model of a people-first approach to managing the pandemic.

The Omicron variant represents another troubling chapter in the COVID-19 pandemic. Countless travel plans have been canceled as scientists and infectious disease experts attempt to gain a greater understanding of the latest variant. In the United States, shortages in tests and healthcare workers have placed immediate strains on society. Forecasts for global economic growth have become less optimistic.

Bloomberg magazine, a U.S. media outlet known for its anti-China bias, recently admitted that China’s “dynamic zero-COVID” policy has been an effective measure against the pandemic. The report stated that China’s average daily COVID-19 cases would rise to 637,155 if the country adopted a U.S.-style approach to the pandemic. Bloomberg quickly changed the subject to more anti-China talking points and avoided any elaboration on the factors for China’s success against COVID-19.

Bloomberg repeated a trend in U.S. media which either ignores the success of the “dynamic zero-COVID” policy or calls it “authoritarian.” This has come at a great cost to the people of the United States and Western countries, who have suffered the worst consequences of the pandemic. Yet the U.S. and Western media have taken part in endless speculation about China’s policy to deflect from the failed COVID-19 responses of their own nations.

The truth is that China has by far been the most successful in protecting human life over the course of the pandemic. China has experienced three deaths per million in the population from COVID-19. The United States, which leads the world in the total number of COVID-19 cases and deaths to the pandemic, averages more than 2,400 deaths per million in the population.

U.S. and Western media have claimed China’s policy cannot be emulated in so-called free and democratic societies. China is accused of irrationally attempting to prevent transmission entirely, the costs of which are too high for Western societies that prioritize the economy over the health of the public.

This is problematic for several reasons. First, China’s strategy does not seek to eliminate transmission entirely but rather to reduce the human and economic costs of the pandemic as quickly and effectively as possible.

Second, the depiction of China’s “dynamic zero-COVID” policy as “irrational” and detrimental to the economy ignores the fact that Western economies have experienced the harshest economic fallout from the pandemic. U.S. economic growth had only begun to catch up to a 2 percent GDP year-on-year average growth in recent months before Omicron reignited economic uncertainty. China was the fastest major economy to achieve growth amid the pandemic and, according to World Bank estimates, is set to grow at two to three times the rate of the United States in 2022. Clearly, China’s “dynamic zero-COVID” policy has taken economic development into account from the very beginning.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the U.S. and Western rejection of China’s “dynamic zero-COVID” policy is that it reflects how effectively misinformation has spread within societies that have adopted a wrongheaded, anti-China political agenda. The United States, for example, was wracked with such high levels of distrust in both the government and healthcare system that an “infodemic” took hold very early on in the pandemic. Former President Donald Trump only aided in spreading misinformation about the pandemic by blaming China for the U.S.’s woes and frequently employing the term “China virus” during his briefs to the country. Current President Joe Biden has done little to increase confidence in the U.S.’s capacity to protect human life beyond a change in rhetoric.

Misinformation has only worsened social fractures in the U.S. and West and weakened already threadbare public health systems. Under such circumstances, China’s “dynamic zero-COVID” policy remains an important model for the world. China’s policy focuses on rapidly addressing outbreaks and establishing long-term strategies for pandemic control and containment. The policy is currently being employed in the city Xi’an, which was placed under lockdown as of December 23 following an outbreak of the Delta variant. Residents have undergone several rounds of mass testing, schools have closed, and local authorities have coordinated with all sectors of society to ensure people have their basic needs met.

China’s “dynamic zero-COVID” policy has been a consistent example of a people-first approach to the pandemic amid a period of global uncertainty. According to chief epidemiologist at China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention Wu Zunyou, the policy has protected 950,000 Chinese lives over the course of the pandemic. This is nothing short of a miracle. U.S. and Western observers would thus benefit from taking an unbiased view of China’s “dynamic zero-COVID” approach rather than the politicized orientation that has been adopted by the media and political establishment.

We reproduce below a valuable article from Workers World contrasting the response of the socialist and capitalist countries to the coronavirus pandemic. The author observes that the success of China, Cuba and others in suppressing the virus can be attributed to a political and economic system based on the interests of the people rather than the protection of private profit.

The ominous toll of 800,000 deaths from COVID-19, reached in the U.S. Dec. 14, confirms that health care for profit is more deadly than the virus itself. The U.S. has consistently had the most COVID-19 deaths of any country. (tinyurl.com/3nunmuv7) 

Since the omicron variant surfaced here Dec. 1, infection rates have jumped off the charts with 193,305 new cases on Dec. 17. The CDC (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) forecasts more than 1 million new COVID-19 cases during Christmas week. (tinyurl.com/sjy4ch2k) 

Yet China, where COVID-19 was first identified and brought under control, has had no deaths from COVID-19 in 2021. This fact alone confirms that a scientific approach with fully accessible health infrastructure, universal vaccination and national coordination at every level is decisive.

Continue reading Health care for profit is more deadly than Covid-19

We are pleased to republish this very useful article by Scott Scheffer, originally published in Struggle for Socialism, about the successes of China’s struggle against the Covid-19 pandemic, and contrasting these with the deadly failures of the United States.

The world is now nearing the end of the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The United States has the highest death toll in the world – 823,390 as of Dec. 16. 

With all the scientific resources available, and billions of dollars in the vaults of the richest capitalist class in history, the U.S. should have been able to succeed in a vaccination campaign and treat everyone before they were infected. Vaccines should have made their way throughout the world, including the global south where the challenges of poverty magnify the horrors of the pandemic. 

Instead, the White House and U.S. intelligence agencies have taken their cue from the Trump administration and continued apace with a manufactured narrative that slanders and blames China for the pandemic. Their goal is to cover up the global calamity created by the giant multinational corporations they serve and turn people’s attention away from the incredible success of the Chinese socialist public health system in fighting the pandemic. 

Continue reading Want to know how to beat Covid? Look at China