>They persisted with covid 0 well into mid-late 22. It was very clear 2 and a half years into the pandemic that covid was not ebola.
It was not clear what omicron was.
Anyway I don't entirely blame them for maintaining the hardline even well past the advent of conflicting evidence. This is actually normal human behavior. People cannot flip their opinions and beliefs in the exact instant they are presented with opposing evidence. Humans just don't work this way. There's no individual or government that will reverse a policy and admit a mistake instantly. Literally not one. It's not right, but I don't expect any other form of behavior from a human or humans running an organization.
>The other conclusions seem off too. Other Asian and South Pacific countries demonstrated their willingness to lock down and turn more authoritarian in the face of an unknown threat. They pivoted though.
Naw not at the scale of China. It's easy for a small island to execute lockdown. It's extremely hard for a landmass as large as china to execute the same thing.
I'd disagree with the first point there, they were very late to pivot.
The rest seems internally inconsistent with where you were initially. I think it's because you might have stretched the kernel of wisdom, "authoritarianism may have some benefit in the kind of disaster which is only mitigated by authoritarianism" a bit further than it goes on its own merits.
They screwed up by doubling down. Your main point would actually be a lot easier to defend if you separated it from the overextended Chinese implementation.
> I'd disagree with the first point there, they were very late to pivot.
Relax the US took 10 years to apologize to the Japanese people they threw into internment camps. That was a bigger fuck up than the china covid lock downs.
>The rest seems internally inconsistent with where you were initially. I think it's because you might have stretched the kernel of wisdom, "authoritarianism may have some benefit in the kind of disaster which is only mitigated by authoritarianism" a bit further than it goes on its own merits.
Internally inconsistent? No it's not. And you didn't point out where too. Just a vague, "seems inconsistent".
It's also not really a stretch. Part of the speed and efficiency in China's response comes from central control. Part of Americas dying infrastructure comes from lack of centralized control, too many Nimbys, different motives and conflicting opinions.
>They screwed up by doubling down. Your main point would actually be a lot easier to defend if you separated it from the overextended Chinese implementation.
Yeah they screwed up. But my point still stands. Also it's not the biggest fuck up. Not by a long shot. Take a look at the US blowing up the nordstream pipelines. Holy shit a literal act of war/terrorism on an allied country. The US is no stranger to dark shit and huge fuck ups on a scale equivalent if not worse than china.
Relax the US took 10 years to apologize to the Japanese people they threw into internment camps. That was a bigger fuck up than the china covid lock downs.
I wouldn't count on China ever admitting they messed up. That's just not how it's done there. Hands will be waved, stories will be spun and they'll talk like it was a perfect strategy.
"Saving face" is very real in Asian cultures. If you can avoid ever admitting a mistake or fault, you do it. I saw it a lot while living there.
I 100% agree with this. I'm Chinese (racially) so I know. That being said, it doesn't mean other "cultures" don't have the concept of "saving face". It's an inborn thing. Genetic. I haven't met anyone asian or not who admits their mistakes with ease. Think about it, 10 years of not apologizing is not that far off from never admitting a mistake.
I will agree with you that from my own experience that this does effect the Chinese more than other people in general. But my argument here is simply that the Chinese had a superior response to other democratic countries when handling covid.
The response ended up being from certain perspectives, mistaken, and the slow reversal of the response while, wrong, is something that governments (including rival governments) also do similarly.
It took me a while to wrap my head around it, but saving face is more than just "not admitting mistakes". It's the view that your social status and honor is based on not being wrong or admitting mistakes.
A good example of the differences are apologies by Western governments for past wrongs. Doing so can actually increase social standing among the population. Admitting guilt and wrongdoing can be seen as a redeeming quality.
But I do agree that not admitting fault is a pretty universal human thing. I think "saving face" has more to do with the social pressures around it.
>A good example of the differences are apologies by Western governments for past wrongs.
Do they apologize for their own past doings or does one US faction throw another faction under the bus through a half-hearted apology?
It seems most of the US population considers an apology worthless at this point, atleast if it's not attached to financial compensation which is the case for the majority of mistakes or crimes. They are just considered political lip service.
I'm chinese. I understand what you're talking about it, More than you. But you are taking it too far. The concept is exactly the same as the the universal thing about not admitting fault. It is exactly the same.
The main difference is the concept has been crystallized into the language and is more prevalent. It is not anything more than that.
It's likely someone who was natively born in China is trying to explain the concept to you without fully understanding western culture. He likely thinks western culture is some sort of pristine culture with no concept at all of "not wanting to admit fault" and was trying to explain it to you thinking that the concept was completely absent from your background. No, this is wrong.
I'm a creature of both worlds. Deep insight into western culture by virtue of being born in the states and deep insight into east asian culture by virtue of being born of the chinese race, having family who is chinese and also having friends who are all chinese.
The duality of my origins make my insight more calibrated in this regard.
Tell me what you observed because you're dead wrong. You're a foreigner and treated as such, your interpretations are likely through a filtered lens. I'm not.
Perhaps you know you're wrong and you're trying to save face?
When you look at Chinese people "saving face", when you look at the Chinese government "saving face" keep in mind that sometimes you're looking at a mirror. We're not that different. I think you mistook a popular Chinese idiom for some Chinese cultural quirk.
As a foreigner, I read the same local news same as locals. I can observe the behavior of governments when it comes to "saving face" versus Western governments.
It's pretty obvious that in countries like China the idea that the government can "never be wrong, never show weakness" is different than the Western approach.
This is a authoritative government thing. Not a Chinese thing.
The western government does the same shit. Their reach just isn't as far as the Chinese government in its ability to completely lock down the media. Instead the US government typically does what they call "a cover up".
Both governments launch massive amounts of propaganda, both would take a loong time to admit thier mistakes if given enough pressure. The only difference is, in china no one is allowed to deliver pressure.
It's unmistakable. The US did it and everybody in Germany and Europe knows it. The US was meanwhile over-concerned with their first major F-35 kill ever: Balloon gate.
> European countries did much better than china regarding covid. US did protlly because of many internal issues which seem to be unadressable.
The US did poorly because of lack of centralized control and abundance of karens and the male counterpart. China had the superior response in terms of infrastructure adaption.
It was very clear what Omicron was by that point. China didn't really relax restrictions until December 2022. By May of 2022, most other countries had pretty much opened up and had Omnicron run rampant through their populations.
My hypothesis is that China stuck with it so long because: 1) their vaccine wasn't that good and they refused superior mRNA vaccines and 2) their ego was all wrapped up in the "glory of the Chinese way" of dealing with Covid and letting it run rampant was tantamount to admitting their policy was wrong.
Doubtful. Pfizer manufacturer 4B and Moderna almost the same. Plus Fosun-BioNTech partnership allowed manufacturing in Hong Kong. There was certainly capacity to produce enough or at least enough for a large percentage of the Chinese population.
China just decided they weren't going to use it. It literally wasn't allowed.
If China had used a mix of mRNA and other vaccines I might see the argument they had a lack of supply.
Hong Kong imported the vaccines. The city was international enough that using a foreign (non-Chinese) vaccine wasn't a political statement that the Chinese vaccine wasn't as effective. The political calculus is different for China generally.
The plan was to manufacturer the vaccine in Asia for the Chinese market.
I agree that the politically, China didn't want to use Western vaccines.
BioNTech and Fosun Pharma are setting up a 50-50 joint venture to make and sell the COVID mRNA shot in China, with manufacturing capacity to produce up to 1 billion doses a year, Fosun said in a filing (PDF) to the Hong Kong Exchange on Sunday.
Setting up… so you’re saying they don’t have access to it now… Which means they didn’t have access to it in January… Which was my point the entire time.
This just isn't true. There has never been enough global supply for China AND the rest of the world. If there was, why (as you stated) would they be setting up net-new manufacturing of it?
That, coupled with the fact that the Chinese population have resisted getting vaccinated meant that it was never a viable strategy to purchase billions of doses and open up. The only option they had was COVID-0 style strategies.
I dont know why youre so hung up on “not enough supply for China”. There is no binary option. They could have imported multiple vaccines (like Vietnam and many other countries did) and used what they imported.
They didnt.
Instead they used their home grown vaccine which had terrible efficacy.
The FDA would be asking for submission if that vaccine was from Europe. There was a huge supply side problem in the US in the initial stages of the pandemic and any additional vaccines could have alleviated this issue.
It's not about the technicalities of submission. It's about whether or not there was political desire to "bend the knee" and ask for a vaccine. The answer is obviously no. Neither side will do it.
It was not clear what omicron was.
Anyway I don't entirely blame them for maintaining the hardline even well past the advent of conflicting evidence. This is actually normal human behavior. People cannot flip their opinions and beliefs in the exact instant they are presented with opposing evidence. Humans just don't work this way. There's no individual or government that will reverse a policy and admit a mistake instantly. Literally not one. It's not right, but I don't expect any other form of behavior from a human or humans running an organization.
>The other conclusions seem off too. Other Asian and South Pacific countries demonstrated their willingness to lock down and turn more authoritarian in the face of an unknown threat. They pivoted though.
Naw not at the scale of China. It's easy for a small island to execute lockdown. It's extremely hard for a landmass as large as china to execute the same thing.