How will China exit zero-Covid?

Almost three years after the virus was first detected in Wuhan, China remains trapped in a seemingly never-ending fight against Covid-19. And the population has had enough.

President Xi Jinping’s increasingly untenable Zero-Covid policy is unleashing the greatest show of public dissent since Tiananmen Square, with protests erupting across 15 Chinese cities, from Hotan in the far west to Shanghai and Beijing.

The re-opening of Taiwan has isolated Beijing as the last major economy in the world to still be pursuing a zero-Covid approach. Indeed, growing frustration at the rest of the world returning to their normal lives has led Chinese TV to censor crowd shots from the World Cup so that locals cannot see unmasked fans enjoying themselves in Qatar. 

While the Chinese authorities show no sign of budging yet, growing unrest in the country begs the question, what would actually happen if Beijing finally scrapped its Zero-Covid policy? 

It would be far from a seamless transition. New analysis from Airfinity forecasts that lifting the policy could result in between 1.3 and 2.1 million deaths. 

Owing to harsh restrictions, population exposure to the virus in China has been tiny compared to that experienced across much of the world. China has recorded just under 1.5 million infections in a population of 1.4 billion.

By comparison, over 90% of the British population are estimated to have had Covid at least once. Thus unsurprisingly, China has one of the lowest deaths per capita in the world, with a national death toll of just 5,232 – compared to over half a million Covid-related deaths in India and more than a million in the US.

What this also means is that the population has an extremely low level of naturally acquired immunity through previous infection. And vaccine uptake in China has been low too. An estimated 40% of over-80s have received a booster shot, while millions remain unvaccinated.

To make matters worse, Beijing has refused to import any international vaccines despite its homegrown shots proving to be far from effective. A host of studies have found that protection from Chinese vaccines, Sinovac and Sinopharm, fade much faster than those used widely elsewhere, becoming largely undetectable after six months. 

While several other countries have already transitioned from “virus eradication” to “learning to live with the virus”, China is likely to face the biggest challenge of all in opening up. A country like New Zealand, for instance, had much higher vaccination rates when it turned its back on Zero-Covid, while Taiwan faced a smaller risk of hospital facilities becoming overwhelmed. China has fewer than five critical care beds per 100,000 people, compared to almost 30 in Taiwan and more than 10 in South Korea. 

Abandoning Zero-Covid is going to be painful and cases across China will inevitably skyrocket. Yet continuing with the approach is unsustainable – not only because of growing public discontent but due to the economic toll too. The World Bank forecasts GDP growth in China of just 2.8% for 2022, far behind the Asia-Pacific’s regional average of 5.3%. This is the first time Beijing’s economic growth forecast has been lower than its neighbours in over 30 years. China’s youth unemployment rate also hit a record high of 19.9% in July. 

Opening up overnight and allowing the virus to sweep through a population of 1.4 billion at once will unleash chaos. It’s more likely the government will do so in stages, and work fast to ramp up vaccinations in the process. But, at present, it seems that Beijing is simply delaying the inevitable. There is no endgame for Zero-Covid.

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