The Undoing of the Unscientific Zero-COVID Policy in China

The Undoing of the Unscientific Zero-COVID Policy in China
Health workers wait for people to scan a health code to test for COVID-19 in the Jing'an district in Shanghai, China, on Dec. 22, 2022. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)
Stu Cvrk
1/2/2023
Updated:
1/7/2023
0:00
Commentary
Communist China has been reeling due to the relaxation of its three-year-long zero-COVID policy, with as many as 250 million infected Chinese last month. That number includes an incredible 37 million who were infected on Dec. 20 alone.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) implemented its zero-COVID policy in an attempt to contain the SARS-CoV-2 virus in 2019, when it shocked the world by locking down the virus epicenter in Wuhan. The policy has evolved to include mass testing, quarantines of the sick in government facilities, and strict lockdowns wherever outbreaks are detected. In a highly unusual circumstance, the CCP has been forced to relax the protocols in response to mass protests across China.
While the focus remains on why the CCP completely reversed its draconian zero-COVID policy, the current rates of infection and deaths in China, the origins of the virus, and its potential linkage to biowarfare research, there remains the unanswered question of why the policy was adopted in the first place since it was anti-science in nature. It is virtually impossible to stop the human-to-human spread of the coronavirus for the reasons noted here:
  • The coronavirus can be present in asymptomatic carriers who can transmit the disease to others.
  • The coronavirus can infect many different kinds of animals that can pass the disease on to humans.
  • There is no highly effective vaccine or antiviral treatment for coronavirus despite efforts by governments to obfuscate the failures of mRNA shots to provide the requisite protections and immunity.
If the premise is correct that zero COVID was anti-science, then that leaves other motivations, including political and geopolitical.
Let us examine some of the possible reasons.

To Contain the Outbreak

Well, that didn’t work, and we’ll never know how many Chinese were infected and died over the past three years because the CCP suppressed the truth. Does anyone seriously believe the numbers reported to Worldometers, which tracks virus cases and deaths worldwide? The current Chinese numbers are 5,245 deaths in three years—an absurd number out of a population of 1.4 billion people!

Since the Chinese won’t share information on the virus genome, we don’t even know which variant(s) are in circulation in China. No wonder countries are requiring testing for any incoming Chinese visitors.

A worker wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) padlocks a fence securing a residential area under COVID-19 lockdown in the Huangpu district of Shanghai on June 13, 2022. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)
A worker wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) padlocks a fence securing a residential area under COVID-19 lockdown in the Huangpu district of Shanghai on June 13, 2022. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

To Convince the World About China’s Leadership

CCP leader Xi Jinping has implemented a campaign to show the world that the “Chinese way” is best. All topics are propagated “with Chinese characteristics” to reinforce and propagandize that claim.
Total control of information sources and media data about the virus makes it easier to convince the world that China’s virus control measures actually work (when no outsiders can prove otherwise). This also deflects pressure on the CCP for hiding information about the origin of the virus.

To Reassert Authoritarian Controls

The virus presented the CCP with a golden opportunity to reassert authoritarian controls over the population through the accelerated implementation of surveillance and social control methods throughout society. This has long been a goal of the communists—to monitor and control all the daily activities of the Chinese to thwart any dissent and to reward CCP-approved behavior.

To Hide China’s Emerging Economic Chaos

The CCP probably determined that measures to combat the virus could be used to hide the emerging economic problems in the Chinese real estate market, the growing debt crisis, and the problems created by a declining birth rate. Some CCP cadres certainly understood that the zero-COVID policy would roil the Chinese economy because mass quarantines would interrupt supply chains and drag productivity down due to widespread absenteeism.

What better way to obfuscate those problems than to propagandize zero-COVID measures and claim they work for the rest of the world?

And other countries eagerly jumped on the zero-COVID bandwagon by implementing lockdowns and testing regimens.

To Attack the US

Whether the virus release in Wuhan was inadvertent or planned, the CCP aimed its propaganda directly at the United States to create maximum chaos in the American economy and society at large. The CCP understands that anything that disrupts America by causing divisiveness, economic turmoil, and outright fear advances its goal of supplanting the United States as the world’s economic and geopolitical hegemon by the 100th anniversary of the founding of the communist Chinese regime.

Could This Be the Real Reason for Zero COVID?

The above are logical reasons for implementing China’s zero COVID, and all or some could have played a part in the decision-making as the policy evolved and was implemented in China over the past three years. However, there may have been a hidden and self-serving reason that the CCP leadership supported the policy. And that was personal fear of catching the virus.
There have been reports over the years that many high-ranking CCP members and family members received organ transplants from the lucrative organ harvesting operations in China. China has long had an organ harvesting industry that has been condemned worldwide (examples here and here).
Falun Gong practitioners take part in a parade to raise awareness about the Chinese regime's brutal persecution of the spiritual practice, including forced organ harvesting, in New York, on May 13, 2022. (Larry Dye/The Epoch Times)
Falun Gong practitioners take part in a parade to raise awareness about the Chinese regime's brutal persecution of the spiritual practice, including forced organ harvesting, in New York, on May 13, 2022. (Larry Dye/The Epoch Times)
Jiang Zemin accelerated the organ harvesting of Falun Gong adherents during his time as Chinese leader. Top CCP officials have long been rumored to extend their lives through organ transplants. Unsurprisingly, Jiang’s son had three transplants.
Those organ recipients are very likely immuno-compromised due to anti-rejection drugs taken to enable the transplants, as noted in a recent video by Epoch TV’s “Crossroads” program. The quarantines and personal isolation created by the zero-COVID policy precluded the development of natural immunities among the population (and within the leadership), which could explain the explosion of new cases in China as the policy has been relaxed in recent weeks.
The recent high incidence of deaths among the CCP members and “top experts” could be explained by the suppressed immune systems of those who received organ transplants, as noted in a video by Spotlight on China. Those people would be particularly susceptible to the SARS-CoV-2 variants that are currently spreading everywhere in China.

Concluding Thoughts

Did Xi Jinping blink when spontaneous riots erupted protesting his draconian COVID measures? Whatever the reason for the abrupt policy change that is opening up China, Western media are currently focused on the virus outbreaks and deaths.

An unanswered question is why the unscientific policy was implemented in the first place. There are several politically motivated possibilities that were summarized above. However, it is entirely possible that the virus presented an existential threat to the CCP leadership and elite themselves since a significant number of them and their families are immune-compromised from the drug therapy associated with having received organ transplants.

Since those organs were probably harvested from unwilling donors per the current CCP policy on organ harvesting, this is indeed karma!

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Stu Cvrk retired as a captain after serving 30 years in the U.S. Navy in a variety of active and reserve capacities, with considerable operational experience in the Middle East and the Western Pacific. Through education and experience as an oceanographer and systems analyst, Cvrk is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, where he received a classical liberal education that serves as the key foundation for his political commentary.
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