US media article: China's "zero-clearing policy" has benefited the world

Reference News Network reported on February 11 that the Bloomberg News website published an article titled "Why the World Needs China's Zero-Clearance Policy" on February 9, saying that China's "zero-clearing policy" has benefited the world. The author is James Major. An excerpt from the article follows:

In the past two years, China's zero-tolerance policies on COVID-19, such as containment, large-scale testing and strict entry quarantines, have prevented the country from a large number of deaths and ensured that all kinds of goods continue to be shipped around the world.

If consumers and businesses want to continue to buy Goods Made in China without having to endure supply shortages and further price increases, they should hope that China will continue to pursue the COVID-19 clearance policy.

Indeed, if China abandons its zero-clearing policy and allows the spread of COVID-19 to a certain extent among its 1.4 billion people, the damage to humanity and the economy will be far greater than the risks currently facing China and the rest of the world.

Once China cancels its epidemic prevention and control measures and reopens to the outside world, there may be a surge in confirmed cases, and it may face a worse situation than other countries that are currently fighting the Opmi Kerong mutation.

According to the researchers' simulations, if China reopens like the United States, the number of infections per day may exceed 630,000. Even if the death rate can be maintained as low as in Japan and South Korea, the number of deaths will still be much higher than the 4636 cases in the past two years.

China has experienced many outbreaks of the epidemic, but all have been contained under the control of the government. While the restrictions have led to temporary closures of ports and factories, all walks of life in China have so far weathered the outbreak almost unscathed. Exports set a record in 2020 and hit new highs in 2021, and without a steady stream of goods from China, the price of U.S. imports would rise more rapidly, and the shortage of various commodities would become more pronounced.

If China does eventually reopen its borders and lift its domestic epidemic prevention and control measures, the stable supply of goods may be unsustainable.

At the start of the outbreak, many Chinese took a away-from-crowd approach, although the government did not force them to do so. If there is a surge in confirmed and fatal cases across the country, Chinese are likely to do the same. Once this happens, the impact on supply chains will be more severe than at any time since the outbreak began.

Even if supply chain shocks are only temporary, widespread commodity shortages will push up already high inflation, dragging down a global economic recovery that appears to be more fragile than it was before the Emergence of the Omicron variant.

As the past two years have shown, a temporary closure does not mean that manufacturers and exporters have stopped work, nor does it mean that goods cannot be loaded on ships. Therefore, the longer China adheres to its zero-clearing policy, the greater the benefits it will bring to the rest of the world.

Source: Reference News Network