[In the year since the coronavirus began its march around the world, China has done what many other countries would not or could not do. With equal measures of coercion and persuasion, it has mobilized its vast Communist Party apparatus to reach deep into the private sector and the broader population, in what the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, has called a “people’s war” against the pandemic — and won.]
By Steven Lee Myers, Keith Bradsher, Sui-Lee Wee and Chris Buckley
The order came on the night of Jan.
12, days after a new outbreak of the coronavirus flared in Hebei, a province
bordering Beijing. The Chinese government’s plan was bold and blunt: it needed
to erect entire towns of prefabricated housing to quarantine people, a project
that would start the next morning.
Part of the job fell to Wei Ye, the
owner of a construction company, which would build and install 1,300 structures
on commandeered farmland.
Everything — the contract, the
plans, the orders for materials — was “all fixed in a few hours,” Mr. Wei said,
adding that he and his employees worked exhaustively to meet the tight
deadline.
“There is pressure, for sure,” he
said, but he was “very honored” to do his part.
In the year since the coronavirus
began its march around the world, China has done what many other countries
would not or could not do. With equal measures of coercion and persuasion, it
has mobilized its vast Communist Party apparatus to reach deep into the private
sector and the broader population, in what the country’s leader, Xi Jinping,
has called a “people’s war” against the pandemic — and won.
China is now reaping long-lasting
benefits that few expected when the virus first emerged in the central Chinese
city of Wuhan and the leadership seemed
as rattled as at any moment since the Tiananmen Square crackdown in
1989.
The success has positioned China
well, economically and diplomatically, to push back against the United States
and others worried about its seemingly inexorable rise. It has also emboldened
Mr. Xi, who has offered China’s experience as a model for others to follow.
While officials in Wuhan initially dithered and
obfuscated for fear of political reprisals, the authorities now leap into
action at any sign of new infections, if at times with excessive zeal. In Hebei
this January, the authorities deployed their well-honed strategy to test
millions and isolate entire communities — all with the goal of getting cases,
officially only dozens a day in a population of 1.4 billion, back to zero.
The government has poured
money into infrastructure projects, its playbook for years, while extending
loans and tax relief to support business and avoid pandemic-related
layoffs. China, which sputtered at the beginning of last year, is the only
major economy that has returned to steady growth.
When it came to developing
vaccines, the government offered land, loans and subsidies for new factories to
make them, along with fast-tracking approvals. Two Chinese vaccines are in mass
production; more are on the way. While the vaccines have shown weaker efficacy
rates than those of Western rivals, 24 countries have already signed up for
them since the pharmaceutical companies have, at Beijing’s urging, promised to
deliver them more quickly.
Other nations, like New Zealand and
South Korea, have done well containing the virus without heavy-handed measures
that would be politically unacceptable in a democratic system. To China’s
leaders, those countries do not compare.
Beijing’s successes in each
dimension of the pandemic — medical, diplomatic and economic — have reinforced
its conviction that an authoritarian capacity to quickly mobilize people and
resources gave China a decisive edge that other major powers like the United
States lacked.
It is an approach that emphasizes a relentless drive for results and relies on
an acquiescent public.
The Communist Party, in this view,
must control not only the government and state-owned enterprises, but also
private businesses and personal lives, prioritizing the collective good over
individual interests.
“They were able to pull together
all of the resources of the one-party state,” said Carl Minzner, a professor of
Chinese law and politics at Fordham University. “This of course includes both
the coercive tools — severe, mandatory mobility restrictions for millions of
people — but also highly effective bureaucratic tools that are maybe unique to
China.”
In so doing, the Chinese Communist
authorities suppressed speech, policed and purged dissenting views and
suffocated any notion of individual freedom or mobility — actions that are
repugnant and unacceptable in any democratic society.
Among the Communist Party leaders,
a sense of vindication is palpable. In the final days of 2020, the seven
members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the country’s top political body,
gathered in Beijing for the equivalent of an annual performance review, where
in theory they can air criticisms of themselves and their colleagues.
Far from even hinting at any
shortcomings — the rising global distrust toward China, for example —
they exalted the party leadership.
“The present-day world is
undergoing a great transformation of the kind not seen for a century,” Mr.
Xi told officials at another meeting in January, “but
time and momentum are on our side.”
A Party Mobilized
In recent weeks, as new cases kept
emerging, the government’s cabinet, the State Council, issued a sweeping new directive. “There cannot be a shred of
neglect about the risk of resurgence,” it said.
The dictates reflected the
micromanaged nature of China’s political system, where the top leaders have
levers to reach down from the corridors of central power to every street and
even apartment building.
The State Council ordered provinces
and cities to set up 24-hour command centers with officials in charge held
responsible for their performance. It called for opening enough quarantine
centers not just to house people within 12 hours of a positive test, but also to
strictly isolate hundreds of close contacts for each positive case.
Cities with up to five million
people should create the capacity to administer a nucleic test to every
resident within two days. Cities with more than five million could take three
to five days.
The key to this mobilization lies
in the party’s ability to tap its vast network of officials, which is woven
into every department and agency in every region.
The government can easily redeploy
“volunteers” to new hot spots, including more than 4,000 medical workers sent
to Hebei after the new outbreak in January. “A Communist Party member goes to
the frontline of the people,” said Bai Yan, a 20-year-old university student,
who has ambitions to join the party.
Zhou Xiaosen, a party member in a
village outside of Shijiazhuang, a city of 11 million people that was among
those locked down, said that those deputized could help police violations, but
also assist those in need. “If they need to go out to buy medicine or
vegetables, we’ll do it for them,” he said.
The government appeals to material
interests, as well as to a sense of patriotism, duty and self-sacrifice.
The China Railway 14th Bureau Group,
a state-owned contractor helping build the quarantine center near Shijiazhuang,
drafted a public vow that its workers would spare no effort. “Don’t haggle over
pay, don’t fuss about conditions, don’t fall short even if it’s life or death,”
the group said in a letter, signed with red thumb prints of
employees.
The network also operates in part
through fear. More than 5,000 local party and government officials have been
ousted in the last year for failures to contain the coronavirus on their watch.
There is little incentive for moderation.
Residents of the northeastern
Chinese city of Tonghua recently complained after officials abruptly imposed a
lockdown without enough preparations for supplying food and other needs. When a
villager near Shijiazhuang tried to escape quarantine to buy a pack of
cigarettes, a zealous party chief ordered him tied to a tree.
“Many measures seemed over the top,
but as far as they’re concerned it was necessary to go over the top,” said Chen
Min, a writer and former Chinese newspaper editor who was in Wuhan throughout
its lockdown. “If you didn’t, it wouldn’t produce results.”
The anger
has faded over the government’s inaction and duplicity early in the
crisis, the consequence of a system that suppresses bad news and criticism.
China’s success has largely drowned out dissent from those who would question
the party’s central control. The authorities have also reshaped the public
narrative by warning and even imprisoning activists who challenged its
triumphant version of events.
In the beginning, the pandemic
seemed to expose “the fundamental pathologies of Xi-style governance,” said
Jude Blanchette, a researcher at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies in Washington.
“In fact, with time and hindsight,
we see that the system performed in large part as Xi Jinping was hoping it
would do,” he added.
The measures in Hebei worked
quickly. At the start of February, the province recorded its first day in a
month without a new coronavirus infection.
An Economy Revived
In many countries, debates have
raged over the balance between protecting public health and keeping the economy
running. In China, there is little debate. It did both.
Even in Wuhan last year, where the
authorities shuttered virtually everything for 76 days, they allowed major
industries to continue operating, including steel plants and semiconductor
factories. They have replicated that strategy when smaller outbreaks have
occurred, going to extraordinary lengths to help businesses in ways large and
small.
China’s experience has underscored
the advice that many experts have suggested but few countries have followed:
The more quickly you bring the pandemic under control, the more quickly the
economy can recover.
While the economic pain was severe
early in the crisis, most businesses closed for only a couple of weeks, if at
all. Few contracts were canceled. Few workers were laid off, in part because
the government strongly discouraged companies from doing so and offered loans
and tax relief to help.
“We coordinated progress in
pandemic control and economic and social development, giving urgency to
restoring life and production,” Mr. Xi said last year.
Zhejiang Huayuan Automotive Parts
Company missed only 17 days of production. With the help of regional
authorities, the company hired buses to bring back workers, who had scattered
for the Lunar New Year holiday and could not return easily since much of the
country was locked down at the beginning. Government passes allowed the buses
through checkpoints restricting travel.
Workers were only allowed to go
back and forth between the factory and dormitories, their temperatures checked
frequently. BYD, a large customer, started manufacturing face masks and shipped
supplies to Huayuan.
An ambulance manufacturer in Anhui
Province increased production immediately, buying screws, bolts and other
fasteners that Huayuan produces. Then Chinese automakers started needing them
as the virus spread and overseas suppliers shut down.
“We just said no to clients who
only wanted standard parts — we wanted to sell more specialized parts, with
higher profit,” said Chen Xiying, the company’s deputy general manager.
“Clients who were slow to pay we rejected outright.”
Like China itself, Huayuan
rebounded quickly. By April, it had ordered nearly $10 million of new equipment
to start a second, highly automated production line. It plans to add 47
technicians to its work force of 340.
Before the pandemic, multinationals
were looking beyond China for their operations, in part prodded by the Trump
administration’s trade war with Beijing. The virus itself added to fears about
dependence on Chinese supply chains.
The pandemic, though, only
reinforced China’s dominance, as the rest of the world struggled to remain open
for business.
Last year, China unexpectedly
surpassed the United States as a destination for foreign direct investment for
the first time, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development. Worldwide, investments plummeted 42 percent, while in China they
grew by 4 percent.
“Despite the human cost and
disruption, the pandemic in economic terms was a blessing in disguise for
China,” said Zhu Ning, deputy dean of the Shanghai Advanced Institute of
Finance.
A Diplomatic Tool
Last February, while the
coronavirus ravaged Wuhan, one of the country’s biggest vaccine manufacturers,
Sinovac Biotech, was in no position to develop a new vaccine to stop it.
The company lacked a high-security
lab to conduct the risky research needed. It had no factory that could produce
the shots, nor the funds to build one.
So the company’s chief executive,
Yin Weidong, reached out to the government for help. On Feb. 27, he met with
Cai Qi, a member of China’s Politburo, and Chen Jining, the mayor of Beijing
and an environmental scientist.
After that, Sinovac had everything
it needed.
The officials gave its researchers
access to one of the country’s safest labs. They provided $780,000 and assigned
government scientists to help.
They also cleared the way for the
construction of a new factory in a district of Beijing. The city donated the
land. The Bank of Beijing, in which the municipality is a major shareholder,
offered a low-interest $9.2 million loan.
When Sinovac needed fermentation
tanks that typically take 18 months to import from abroad, the government
ordered another manufacturer to work 24 hours a day to make them instead.
It was the sort of
all-of-government approach that Mr. Xi outlined at a Politburo Standing
Committee meeting two days after Wuhan was locked down. He urged the country to
“accelerate the development of therapeutic drugs and vaccines,” and Beijing
broadly showered resources.
CanSino Biologics, a private
company, partnered with the People’s Liberation Army, working with little rest
to produce the first trial doses by March. Sinopharm, a state-owned
pharmaceutical company, got government funding in three and a half days to
build a factory.
Mr. Yin of Sinovac called the
project “Operation Coronavirus” in keeping with the wartime rhetoric of the
country’s fight against the outbreak. “It was only under such comprehensive
conditions that our workshop could be put into production,” he told The Beijing
News, a state-controlled newspaper.
Less than three months after Mr.
Yin’s Feb. 27 meeting, Sinovac had created a vaccine that could be tested in
humans and had built a giant factory. It is churning out 400,000 vaccines a
day, and hopes to produce as many as one billion this year.
The crash course to vaccinate a
nation ultimately opened a different opportunity.
With the coronavirus largely
stamped out at home, China could sell more of its vaccines abroad. They “will
be made a global public good,” Mr. Xi promised the World Health Assembly last
May.
Although officials bristle at the
premise, “vaccine diplomacy” has become a tool to assuage some of the
anger over China’s missteps, helping shore up its global standing at a
time when it has been under pressure from the United States and others.
“This is where China can come in
and look like a real savior, like a friend in need,” said Ray Yip, a former
head of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in China.
China’s efficiency at home has not
translated into an
easy triumph abroad. Chinese vaccines have lower efficacy rates. Officials
in Brazil and Turkey have complained about delays. Still, many countries that
have so far signed up for them have acknowledged that they could not afford to
wait months for those made by the Americans or Europeans.
On Jan. 16, Serbia became the first
European country to receive Chinese vaccines, some one million doses from
Sinopharm. The country’s president, Aleksandr Vučić, stood in chilly winds with
the Chinese ambassador to welcome the first planeload of supplies.
He told reporters that he was “not
afraid to brag” of the country’s relationship with China.
“I’m proud of that and will invest
more and more of our time and efforts to create and even improve our great
relationship with the Chinese leadership and the Chinese people.”
Coral Yang, Amber Wang, Claire Fu
and Elsie Chen contributed research.
China Bounces Back From the
Epidemic
