The majority of Shanghai’s 26 million people are once again on lockdown, in what has been widely interpreted as a hint that China, the world’s second-largest economy, is struggling to make sense of its zero-Covid plan, which many think is unsustainable. It has been stated that it is also a huge diversion from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose closeness with Russian President Vladimir Putin has been described as “limitless.”
On the margins of the Beijing Winter Olympics, soon before the full-fledged conflict began on February 24, Jinping and Putin jointly talked about the depth of their link in a statement that claimed their relationship had “no ‘forbidden’ areas of collaboration.”
They called on NATO and its members to “abandon the ideologized approaches of the cold war” and expressed support for each other’s positions on Ukraine and Taiwan, expressing their growing similar interests in their various confrontations with the West.
That is because the communist ruler has “much more important matters to worry about than conflict in far-off Ukraine,” according to Rana Mitter, Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China at the University of Oxford.
Last weekend, coronavirus levels in Shanghai, the country’s largest metropolis and financial hub, reached their highest since the pandemic’s early days.
Because of the authorities’ fixation with eradicating the virus, the mega-city was divided in two, with the Huangpu River acting as the dividing line.
The eastern half went into lockdown on Monday, March 28, and was supposed to come out on Friday, April 1 to allow the western side to turn.
The western side’s lockdown went down without a hitch. The eastern side, on the other hand, did not leave after an extension was announced late Thursday night.
“While bombs rain down on Mariupol, Covid remains the big news in China,” Prof Mitter added. Much of the rest of the globe, including India, has opened up, but China and Japan remain notable exceptions.
“Stories of commuters clearing grocery shelves dominate the media, exactly as they did in Britain in spring 2020.”
“The economic and social turbulence that Covid has brought to China has impacted its attitude to Ukraine,” he wrote in UnHerd.
“It is undeniably true that China, like every other great power, would aim to expand its geopolitical position wherever possible.” However, for the time being, any choices on Ukraine will almost definitely be viewed first and foremost via a local lens.”
On Friday, Chinese officials reported that the city’s daily count of infections with the highly transmissible Omicron type, which began spreading approximately a month ago, had decreased for the second day in a row.
It recorded 4,144 locally transmitted new asymptomatic cases and 358 symptomatic cases on Thursday, compared to 5,298 and 355 the day before.
Residents are compelled to undergo rounds of nucleic acid testing performed by healthcare staff in hazmat suits while under lockdown, which is the only activity for which they are permitted to leave their homes.
With individuals advised not to leave their houses even to dispose of garbage or walk their dogs, public transportation stopped in much of the city, and non-essentials such as restaurants and retail malls closed, the Shanghai shut-down has unexpectedly caused economic problems.
Factory activity in China declined at the sharpest rate in two years in March, according to data released on Friday, with the Caixin/Markit manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) falling from 50.4 in February to 48.1 in March – the highest rate of contraction since February 2020.
Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley has dramatically reduced the nation’s economic growth prediction for this year, while Citigroup has warned of dangers to the second-quarter outlook.
