China COVID zero tolerance

After tennis yesterday I went to Trader Joe's to pick up a number of things, amongst them not meat. Which was a good thing, because there really wasn't a ton of meat in the meat display, including chicken. At that time of day (6:30) it could have been a function of trucks not getting there, or it could have been an internal staffing issue of just not having someone available to stock the shelves. At any rate, I didn't really care, both because we have been cutting meat consumption in our house for a long time and because I've gotten accustomed to shortages so they don't freak me out much. At a high level it does remind me to keep reasonably high levels of things like beans, peanut butter, tuna, etc. at the crib, but that I've been doing anyway just because it gives me a warm feeling.

Ahh yes, China. Stories continue to emerge about China's zero tolerance policies and their knock on effects. Certainly they could create more supply chain problems for us, which could lead to inflation. I think that's all good, honestly. People in the West need to learn to sort out what's really important to them, and pricing mechanisms are really the best way of helping people figure out what they really want.

The policies are also exposing cracks in the facade of absolute control by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party). The huge outcry over the woman who lost her child outside a hospital in the city of X'ian because she didn't have an up to date COVID test is one case in point. People there are tired and exhausted by the government's excesses, which also throw policies in the West into considerable relief. Those who whine about vaccine mandates and the social pressure to wear masks should really be paying attention to what real totalitarianism looks like.

More than anything, China's lockdown policy seems like a doubling down because the government can't admit it made a mistake. How it will navigate the Winter Olympics is anyone's guess. There will be a lot of bad press if they quarantine athletes and journalists in really shitty hotels.

Certainly the policy degrades any real threat to Taiwan in the short run. There is no way that Beijing can attack Taiwan if it can't allow a little COVID to run through the population.  Too many people would have to be in motion to make an attack work, and they couldn't be quarantined once they got going. Which should give the Biden administration some leverage in dealing with Putin re Ukraine, since the negotiations there appear geared more than anything to be a test bed for how far we are willing to go for Taiwan.

Lastly, given China's rapidly aging population, it's surprising that the CCP isn't willing to let COVID run through the population and cull some of its superannuation problem. We know that the CCP at a very basic level really doesn't care that much about its people. If it did, pensions and health insurance would be better and its population wouldn't have to save 50% of its income. How could the CCP jail that many Uighurs if it did, or kill so many Falun Gong, or tolerate such shoddy building standards that 13,000 could die in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake (admittedly that was better than the half a million or so that died in the 1976 Tangshan earthquake).

No, the CCP can't revise its policy re COVID because it doesn't have a mechanism for changing its mind.