Even a common cold becomes suspect in totalitarian China
- Economy
How much has China’s economic activity slowed down? This is a question that my fellow economists and I have been trying very hard to answer for the past few weeks. Of all the purchases that people have put off, what proportion will be made up later? How much of the demand for oil or German cars will be lost forever? What plans do the Chinese authorities have for restarting the world’s factory, as China has become, when the virus is under control?
Nowadays, for reliable information about China you need to think creatively. Data coming out of the country are not always what they seem, and now President Xi Jinping is even more reluctant than usual to release unflattering information. Instead, we have been looking at satellite images, which show that China’s daily traffic is down by 80 percent. We have also looked at the carbon emissions over China: smoking chimneys, the thinking goes, indicate economic activity.
In combination, these factors point towards an economy that is operating at an estimated 40-50 percent of its capacity. This means that exports to China will plummet. Imports from China will become scarce, and therefore more expensive. Still, the infection rate seems to be on the decline, and experts believe that February will see a peak in new infections.
For President-for-Life Xi Jinping, two factors are crucial. First, he needs to halt the number of infections. At the same time, he needs economic output to be as high as possible, and as soon as the troubles are over he has to make sure that consumer spending increases extra fast. For Xi’s own position, the economy is perhaps more important than his people’s health, although of course the two are intrinsically linked
Xi needs the benefits of constantly rising prosperity levels to retain his people’s support. The meticulously planned and implemented central control – running from gargantuan state-owned companies, and through mobile technology, into every corner of China’s society – is proving to be very useful in the efforts to stop the virus from spreading.
““Just imagine, you’ve got an ordinary cold and have not reported this because you’re afraid of ending up in a hospital full of coronavirus patients.””
Sandra Phlippen
Chief Economist ABN AMROFor Chinese families, however, it is an entirely different story. In Hubei Province, the epicentre of the outbreak, officials have been paying house calls to anyone who has bought fever or cough medicine; this has been going on since 20 January. Houses are being searched everywhere, in an attempt to identify infected Chinese who have not reported their disease. What about all those people who have a common cold, I wonder, but who have not reported it, out of fear of finding themselves in a hospital full of coronavirus infections?
Anyone selling cough or fever medicine or treatment is required to register both their own details and their patients’ in a digital patient portal. Vast quarantine centres have been built outside the city for everyone who has caught the disease.
It is gradually becoming clear that the Chinese people are definitely unhappy with the government’s actions. It is also apparent that supplies of everything are running out.
The millions of people there are suffering dreadfully. China’s totalitarian surveillance is both painful and necessary, but I believe that the social disorder that it will trigger will be significant.