China’s successful crackdown on Covid-19 is rooted in its surveillance state

As most of Europe, Asia, America and Africa, are facing a second phase of the Covid-19 epidemic – one which is perhaps more socially and economically lethal than the first – China is celebrating a recovery. Covid, according to official news media, is all but beaten and China is readying to help the rest of the world (selectively and on its own terms, of course). Two billion vaccines will be put out for global sale by the turn of the year.

A sign that all is on the right path in the People’s Republic is the return to growth in the third quarter of the year. This comes after a five per cent contraction of the economy in the first quarter. That was when China closed – as WC Fields said of Philadelphia – with the heavily-policed lockdown of urban centres, including Beijing, to prevent the virus spreading.

In the third quarter,  the economy grew by 4.9 per cent. This autumn, 11 million people in Wuhan have been tested for the virus. In a single campaign, the same number – 11 million – were tested in a matter of five days this month in the coastal city of Qingdao, according to the Xinhua agency. This was triggered by the discovery of 13 new cases – so far, no more have tested positive. The BBC has reported that the real number in Qingdao is 9 million. There is a bit of a tale in this discrepancy between the figures.

When the pandemic panic hit at the beginning of the year, some predicted that the foundations of Xi Jinping’s would be shaken, and the credibility of the whole system was on the line. In the first spate of the outbreak from Wuhan some 4,000 deaths were recorded.

Today Worldometer, a site used by Google and a number of university sites, records China as having 85,704 cases to date and 4,634 deaths from this coronavirus, SARS-Cov-2. This is a tenth of the deaths recorded by the same organisation for the UK. The number of deaths from the pandemic in the US has just topped the 225,000 mark. Meanwhile President Trump continues to denounce the “Chinese virus”, blaming Beijing for all the ills it has brought his country, though hinting much of those may be exaggerated.

True, it may well be the case that the data for China are not reliable (more about this below), but the contrast between how Beijing has approached the crisis and the attitudes of its western competitors should still be examined carefully.

“China has effectively controlled Covid-19 and its economy is returning to life,” the Economist explains in a rueful commentary in its “Chaguan” column. “Meanwhile governments in America, Europe and beyond face second waves of infections and business bankruptcies.” The editorial in the latest edition of the Economist, which includes a cover page denunciation of China’s abuse of the entire Muslim Uighur population, points out the differences in public perceptions about China, Covid and the ensuing global crisis. In doing so it also underscores the huge challenge worldwide of how we generate, curate, and consume news.

China’s approach has garnered few plaudits across the world – the Pew surveys of attitudes to China show an alarming leap in mistrust – conspicuously in Australia and in Europe. These countries all disapprove of China’s approach to handling the virus, domestically and internationally.

“It’s not good. It shows that China works to a different set of rules,” says Bruno Maçães, the geopolitical commentator, writer and former Portuguese minister and diplomat. “China sees this a national security crisis, while the Western nations see it as an international public health crisis”, he explains. “They have used tools to deal with this which we wouldn’t dream of using. They have paid a price. It’s a fundamental clash of values.”

“The Europeans see this as requiring a multi-layered social approach,” says Maçães, who has written two books about Belt and Road and China’s foreign policy. “China saw that the status of the state and its power could be compromised by the crisis.” In the way they went about the problem, with state security and hard power, China’s international image has deteriorated. It as if Europe is now saying that business with China should be pursued with utmost caution. “The frameworks – frames of reference – are totally different.”

Maçães thinks the figures reported to the WHO from China were probably massaged. He joins a growing chorus of opinion about the unreliability of some international reporting on the statistics of Covid. CNN has just questioned the reporting of Worldometer itself, a mysterious organisation that reports highly accurate figures on Covid-19 for the West, the US and UK especially, and suspiciously low double-digit figures for Covid deaths in countries such as Vietnam, Tajikistan and Singapore.

China’s relations with the WHO, along with its offer of vaccines for the international markets, is curious, too. Maçães doesn’t think it will enhance China’s reputation, nor its leadership of three other key UN agencies. The vaccines on offer will probably go to Vietnam and Russia – in a modern twist on the old lines of Cold War patronage.

Yet it’s unlikely that China could effectively police the pandemic because of its use of big data analysis and collection – a prime example of what Ivan Krastev calls “big data totalitarianism,” in action. Bruno Maçães  puts it down to old fashioned, ruthless policing – boots on the ground, and batons at the ready. He said the same approach to seeing the control of Covid as a security exercise was behind the tough methods that had brought some form of success in Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam and Hong Kong.

Maçães thinks Covid is now a major defining issue for our age. China is the pre-eminent rising superpower, and is to be treated with extreme care. Witness the attitude to the human rights scandal of the Uighurs. “It is important, of course. But look at the different approach by Europe to Russia and China. You put sanctions on Russia for its abuses. But there are no proposals for sanctions on China over the Uighurs.”

China is working on its own parallel system of global relations and diplomacy, parallel to the UN system and based on the Belt and Road project in its different forms.

As he says, we are still at the beginning of the Covid era. “It is far too early to come to definitive conclusions about the long-term prospects,” says Maçães, which is why he is holding off writing his next book.