China contagion beijing’s covid response continues to hurt the world feeding inflation & pulling down growth

China contagion beijing’s covid response continues to hurt the world feeding inflation & pulling down growth

China’s economy grew by only 0.4% in the April-June quarter, adding to fears of a global recession. The sharp slowdown was brought on by strict Covid lockdowns imposed across major Chinese centres in April and May, including the commercial hub of Shanghai. China is the only major country today that continues to adhere to a stringent zero-Covid strategy. And given the upcoming 20th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) congress where Xi Jinping is seeking to secure an unconventional third term as head of the Chinese state, Beijing can’t get off this wagon.

This in turn means that the global economy continues to be held to ransom by the peculiarities of the Chinese political system. China, as the largest trader and factory of the world, holds a dominant position in global supply chains. But Beijing today is weaponising economic interdependencies to achieve strategic objectives. In fact, China behaved less-than-responsibly in the early days of the pandemic. That is now widely believed to have aided the rapid spread of the disease across the world.

Many experts argue China should have reached out to WHO with a warning before December 31, 2019. Then Li Wenliang of the Wuhan Central Hospital, who had warned his colleagues about the virus, was harassed by Chinese authorities. And the laboratory at the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Centre, which published the world’s first genome sequence of SARS-CoV-2 on January 11, 2020, was ordered to shut down for “rectification” a day after. China privileged protecting the image of the CCP and Xi over a transparent Covid response. It’s doing so again with its zero-Covid strategy and blocking of investigations into Covid’s origins. Major countries, including India, must find ways to reduce dependence on China’s production chains, and invest in resilient supply networks.