China’s break from Covid zero poses fresh challenge

There is a familiar and unwelcome rhyme to events unfolding in China concerning an explosion of Covid-19 cases and the corresponding failure by Communist Party authorities to give the world an honest appraisal of what is taking place. Three years ago a similar lack of transparency allowed an outbreak first detected in Wuhan to become a pandemic that continues to test the global community and economy. Unlike other nations, China has persisted with a Covid-zero approach until last month, when it became politically and scientifically impossible to stem the tide of infections.

By abruptly abandoning the unpopular Covid restrictions, China has unleashed a wave of infections that has overwhelmed its medical defences and produced another layer of global uncertainty. The spike in Covid cases was inevitable but unavoidable. The duty of government is to put in place the protections and resources necessary to limit the damage. This is particularly so in China where the abandonment of Covid zero coincides with the Chinese New Year period when many Chinese citizens travel internally and abroad. This has sparked a mixed response from authorities in North America, Europe, Asia and the Pacific, all fearful of what a rapid incubation of the virus among such a large population may bring. The China Covid boom also bodes ill for the global economy, threatening another supply-chain crisis and worsening global inflation. Together with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, these inflationary pressures dashed hopes of a speedy return to global growth and ended an extended period of cheap money, forcing global markets to recalibrate and reprice risk. As a result, the world has a lot riding on how China is able to manage its Covid reckoning because with high levels of debt and an energy crisis to contend with, major countries do not have the flexibility or fiscal buffers to respond. Jim Chalmers says the China outbreak will be one of the “key risks” to the economy in 2023 and have a “substantial impact” on supply chains in Australia and around the world,

The Albanese government has made the right decision to follow the US and elsewhere and insist on pre-travel testing for visitors from China. As the World Health Organisation has explained, the move is made necessary by the lack of credible information on case numbers from the Chinese side. But the government must resist urgings for greater restrictions such as those by independent MP Monique Ryan, who wants mandatory testing for all visitors and for the government to reinstate “other public health measures”. The lesson from Covid has been that ultimately it must be accepted as a fact of life. As Holman W. Jenkins Jr wrote in The Wall Street Journal, the world must ask why China failed to do what other zero-Covid societies, such as Australia and New Zealand, did. Jenkins argues Beijing’s second biggest mistake, after declining to import superior Western vaccines, was not studying how Australia and New Zealand, as well as Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea, pulled this off. They did so by speaking honestly to their people about the need to let the virus circulate for them to rejoin humanity.

Federal Health Minister Mark Butler has a duty to keep the public informed as China’s emergence from Covid zero plays out. This includes explaining the futility of returning to the sorts of measures that cost the economy dearly for little tangible long-term benefit. The new year brings a new chapter in Covid management but we are better prepared to deal with it in an orderly and responsible fashion.