Retail sales and the property market in China are being hammered by draconian Covid restrictions and the country’s nascent recovery is being choked off. The Telegraph has more.
Navigating the maze-like showroom that is an Ikea store has always been notoriously difficult. But last weekend, hundreds of shoppers in Shanghai found themselves barging their way past security guards just to get out of the doors at the Xuhui district outlet.
On social media it looked like a closing-down sale or Black Friday scrum. But these shoppers weren’t in search of a bargain Billy bookcase. They were simply trying to leave the store.
China’s draconian approach to tackling Covid-19 has previously left some shoppers trading their handbags for sleeping bags. In Shanghai, those unfortunate enough to fail in the escape from Ikea were trapped for hours behind the locked exit as authorities ordered swab tests for all customers, all because one shopper was in close contact with someone with the virus.
They’re not alone. Horror stories have emerged of people being locked in Uniqlo for 48 hours or being trapped in Disneyland as authorities mass-tested tens of thousands in the pursuit of Covid-zero. “I never thought that the longest queue in Disneyland would be for a nucleic acid test,” one disgruntled theme park-goer said last year on social media.
Official figures on Monday provided further evidence that the strict Covid policies are choking off an already nascent recovery. Retail sales have slowed, factory production is stuttering and even investment is falling short of expectations. The talk now is not whether the country will miss an implicit growth target of 5.5pc this year, but by how much.
Shanghai, China’s most populous urban area, has endured some of the strictest and prolonged lockdowns in the world under a strategy set by the country’s premier Xi Jinping. The city of 20 million people has ordered flash lockdowns of areas where positive cases or their close contacts have been detected.
It is hurting morale as well as damaging business sentiment and tourism, and inflicting long term damage on the economy.
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
This reaction is the main reason why I think the lab leak was the result of a fk-up rather than deliberate. Now the
catbug is out of the bag however, authoritarians can only think of one reaction to a problem, suppression through total control.The longer this all goes on and the more I see politicians and public health bureaucrats finally get chewed up in the court of public opinion the less likely I think this was all a devious well executed conspiracy. Although, that would be an excellent way for the elites running the show to deflect attention it seems like the simplest explanation for this all is greed, opportunism, and corruption
What I find strange about this is, objectively as a lockdown sceptics, we can see how wrong and impractical attempting to control the virus is. Self-inflicted economic damage obviously does not align with China’s global objectives. So there must be conflicting forces. The tendency to want to maintain economic health and vitality, vs the desire to exploit ready opportunities to demonstrate state power and maintain control over the population. The latter is winning out. Yet if the “benefit” of “the opportunity to demonstrate control” is put to one side, there is no benefit at all; Only negatives. And there are plenty of other ways the Chinese state can demonstrate power over the populace. These lockdown policies damage China. Yet the authorities are going ahead anyway. This speaks to the team Toby versus Team James debate. They really are caught up in the hubris of the belief they can control the virus and are simply unprepared to accept they cannot. Sure some in the CCP will be lockdown sceptics, but if you don’t believe lockdowns work, there is no real benefit to China from being pro lockdown. Therefore I must conclude, as crazy as it seems to those who can see the truth, the key decision makers simply aren’t that bright and believe in their actions. Team Toby is right.
BTW I don’t say this as some point-scoring comment. I have always been extremely torn and uncertain about what is truly motivating lockdown policy. The degree of cognitive dissonance I have experienced trying to figure out why has been deeply disturbing to me.
Often in the comments I read here, it seems everyone is right to one degree or another. It might all make more sense though if we entertain the possibility that it is absolutely nothing to do with a virus.
The CCP, like many in the West, mistook Ponzi schemes for free market economics, and they were unprotected by the limiting factors of a truly free market. In a frenzy of unbridled speculation, why even build buildings fit for living in? As long as the bubble is growing, you can power an economy at half the cost – just sculp it all literally and figuratively from sand. Like these buildings, this experiment in a simulacrum of capitalism is crumbling to the touch, and the CCP is facing a popular revolt from the middle classes, who likely comprising a large number of their own, present a far greater threat than peasant farmers.
Hence the need for an existential threat to keep a population distracted and clamouring for safety. One where people rushing to the bank to withdraw their savings can be imprisoned by a smartphone app tracking and reporting their location; where potential uprisings can be easily routed before they take shape. One that hides the true nature of the crisis from an increasingly nervy outside world that has come to rely on the economic bubble as much as their own middle classes.
If that doesn’t work, they always have sabre-rattling at Taiwan or the US as a back up. Whether the CCP can keep Chinese citizens controlled indefinitely through lockdowns; whether they might need to unleash a more tangible horror on their own population to keep them controlled (they have plenty of options to choose from, including Mao’s favourite), or whether their leadership will face a sudden, aggressive purge, is unclear.
Why not both?
They conspire and in the process do phenomenally stupid things.
People who have succeeded at getting their hands on the levers of power aren’t necessarily good at anything else. They may also have been lucky to get their hands on power in the first place. And there is a good chance they are sociopaths, though.
Take Hitler for example. His biggest ability was getting to power, mostly by doing a lot of talking. And he was obviously a sociopath. Once he was in power, he misused all the power of the German state at the time and drove the whole country into oblivion one crazy, idiotic, destructive decision after another.
At one point he looked like he was a genius. Until he spent and misused all the resources of the country. And then in the end he looked like the pathetic, mad, useless sociopath he always was.
They’re evil AND stupid.
Great comment
Exactly.
Totally agree.
Hitler got into power because the people who were scheming to get rid of the republic and openly start rebuilding Germany’s military capacity had put a sizable amount of money into making him a popular figure throughout the Reich (instead of being a local anomaly in Munich with some outreach to other Bavarian towns) and tried to reap the benefits of what they had sown after their attempts at direct rule had failed in a thicket of infighting and incompetence.
He also didn’t drive the country into oblivion. It was – quite purposely – again destroyed by the overwhelming military might of a coalition of so-called western powers to whom the very existance of a German nation state is a traditional anathema.
“He also didn’t drive the country into oblivion.”
Didn’t he have something to do with starting and perpetuating WW2, invading Europe etc? Or are you saying the “western powers” would have found some other excuse to destroy Germany? If so how do you account for the current state of Germany, which seems to be doing OK (though I am damn glad I don’t live there)?
There are currently about 7 German states in Europe plus remaining German irridentas in France and Italy neither the Italians nor the French quite managed to obliterate despite this certainly wasn’t for want of trying. There are even still traces of a German population in the depopulated wildnerness Stalin created in eastern Europe with the assent of his western financiers and arms suppliers.
The so-called second world war would inevitably have happened sooner or later. That it turned from a localized war with Poland into another years-long European conflagration was perfectly avoidable. Poland was jointly invaded by Germany and Russia and afterwards partitioned between both powers. Neither France nor England ever had an issue with the Russian particpiation in this. In fact, pretty much all of eastern Europe was handed over to ‘communist’ Russia on a silver plate (German idiom) to treat as it pleased it ‘in perpetuity’ by the supposedly anti-communist western states.
One can even take one step back here: In 1914, the Austrians wanted war with Serbia due to competing interests in the Balkans. This caused
the Russian to enter the fray by initiating a general mobilization of their armed forces. Germany responded to this with a partial mobilization of its armed forces – inevitable to avoid getting caught off-guard by the Russian army – and a request to France to declare itself neutral. The French reply to that was to start the general mobilization of its armed forces which – again by necessity – led to a general mobilization of the German army.
If you’re saying that the country now called Germany might have ended up a different shape in different circumstances, then yes maybe you are right. If you’re saying HItler was goaded, maybe, I don’t know enough about it to refute that. But he certainly seems to have responded enthusiastically to the goading, and taken a shit or bust approach.
I’m saying that the personality of Hitler matters a lot less here than the historical circumstances he found himself in. Maintaining a power vacuum of toy states, some or most of them being populated by ethnic Germans, in central Europe and western Eastern Europe has been a traditional French policy since at least 1648 (Peace of Westphalia) and a British policy (extending to the overseas Brits living in the USA) ever since Germany started to compete (somewhat) effectively with Britain after the so-called German unification of 1871. This dictated the ultimate outcome of both so-called world wars.
Well I think the original post and the original point was really about how political leaders who may start out behaving rationally or appearing rational can lurch into self destruct mode – or do you maintain that Hitler was rational and sought the objective best outcome for Germany and for himself right until he killed himself in his bunker?
That’s the precise reason why I wrote a reply to that: Hitler didn’t come into power in the way the author of that text believed he did and he didn’t single-handledy lead Germany into oblivion in the way it was claimed. The war to mend what the Entente powers had broken would have happened regardless of him. And in all likeliness, it would pretty much have had a very similar outcome.
The moral outcry about the so-called holocaust is decidedly a post-war phenomenon. Partially, this may have been the case because not enough was known about it. OTOH, some US bomber general famously scribbled Kill this nonsense onto a plan to stop transport of new prisoners to Auschwitz by bombing the train ramps.
History doesn’t work like a superhero action comic where the good guys combat the bad guys in order to save the world from them.
I am well aware that history doesn’t work like a superhero action comic.
Are you saying Hitler wasn’t a good talker and wasn’t ultimately self destructive (and destructive of his country)? Whether his country would have been destroyed anyway is not the point, the point is that people who are good talkers can then go a bit mad – and politicians are usually reasonably good talkers and can then abuse power, sometimes in quite illogical ways that harm them as well as others. That doesn’t seem like an especially controversial view to me.
Regarding the holocaust, I am not sure why you mention this. Neither I nor stewart referred to it.
This example is flawed because what Stewart believed had happened in fact didn’t happen. He could as well have claimed that the real culprit was the tooth fairy.
One reason for it “doing OK” could well be the sensible use of its Marshall Plan money to invest in their infrastructure. Unlike the British who blew their funds on non infrastructure spending
I don’t understand what China is doing. I am certain they have been in on the Scam from the start and there is no question they will have access to all the evidence proving that C1984 is a bio-weapon. I still take the view that they were in on the lab project from the off and knew what was happening from the start.
So, China is still a mystery but cock-up this ain’t.
Whatever the intention behind it’s development was, this is why I think the release when it happened, was unintentional.
The problem Xi has is that they have bet the farm on suppression techniques. If they have to back down on that they look weak – as NZ premier Ardern is finding out. The one thing they fear most is to look weak and have to admit they got it wrong because much of their power relies on the impression of them being infallible.
This is my final 2p worth before I bid farewell to this site.
Without making any references to any published tomes and attempting some non academic speak.
This happened in one store in a huge country, they are not stupid, far from it.
Think about this, when you buy anything in this country, even if it’s from a well respected store with a good reputation, where is it made?
Even some pottery bought in Stoke with a brand name were made in China.
Where are the batteries for the virtue signalling EV made?
Where are most solar panels made?
Wind turbine blades?
Computer components?
The ubiquitous anti CoViD19 masks?
The predominant overseas students are from which country?
Sorry, that’s too subtle for me. Can you explain your point in Ladybird book terms?
Everything which used to be labelled made in Japan in the 1980s has been labelled made in China for quite some time. This has enabled China to become somewhat less of a rural backwater micromanaged by an autocratic caste of officials since times immemorial. As its course seems now firmly set towards auto-destruct, we can expect a new label in the not too distant future.
I agree, but not clear that’s the point John was making. He says they are not stupid.
I don’t think that was his point, either. But in my opinion, China attracted a lot of investment in manufacturing by the usual cheapskates who are always on the lookout for regions with lighter labour laws where workers are thus more readily exploited. If the Chinese government insists on making that even medium-term unworkable, factories will be built elsewhere.
Indeed and IMO that would be no bad thing.
Correct, in fact this has been happening for some time – you will notice that a lot of garment manufacturing is now done in Bangladesh or Indonesia
Bloody hell John, I didn’t mean to cause any offence by my comments. Perhaps I can be a bit brusque and direct sometimes. It’s just your personal writing style, that’s all. Not a criticism just an observation. Sometimes it felt like I was being lectured *at* as opposed to engaged *with*.
All comments and contributions are welcomed and appreciated, in my opinion, and I’d be sad if my previous replies to you were enough to make you think about stopping your postings. I apologise if my previous posts have upset you.
And for what its worth, I agree entirely. All of the blue and white Dutch pottery which fills the tourist shops here is all made in China.
Who won the Cold War?
Going back to the original “Top Gun” film from the 1980’s, the hostile aircraft that approached within 200 miles of the aircraft carrier were Soviet Union manufactured MiGs.
At one point the commander says to Maverick that if he pulls off another stunt then he will be ferrying plastic dog shit from Hong Kong. Hong Kong is a densely populated island with no mass production facilities, it was leased to the U.K. and so anything marked as “made in Hong Kong” avoided any direct connection with China, thus avoiding any embargoes.
Perhaps they know something about Covid that we don’t.
I also note that they don’t use mRNA spike based vaccines.
One final thought, did this really happen as portrayed? Was it broadcast propaganda by the CCP primarily for home consumption as a means of control, do this or else that will happen?
It’s certainly good to be highly sceptical of any “official” news from CCP-land, but in general has there not been enough anecdotal evidence from individuals in China and HK to verify that the mad lockdowns are actually happening? Unless they are all bots?
A big obstacle to understanding communist regimes is the assumption that their stated, usually altruistic, goals are the real ones; with this mindset, any failure to achieve the stated goals, such as ‘Zero Covid,’ is seen as the product of misguided idealism. If the CCP is really trying to eliminate a virus through lockdowns then its actions are nonsensical. However, if the goal is to maintain control of a population in the face of economic collapse, acute shortages of food and energy and growing awareness of the true nature of the regime then the lockdowns make a lot of sense. Far better to have a population fearful of the threat of a virus so that they dutifully obey party mandates, accept being welded in their homes with inadequate food and turn on any of their number who dares to resist. It’s the age-old Marxist philosophy of struggle: tell the people they are under attack by some invisible external force and that only by dutifully following the Party (which is the one really attacking them) can they hope to be saved from it. Meanwhile big multi-nationals, whilst claiming to be the anti-thesis of Communism, profiteer from the unopposed slave labour and access to natural resources that it brings.
Correct analysis. The CCP killed millions by starvation in “the great leap forward” and it made not a jot of difference to the policy. All they care about is remaining in power and how they can ensure it.
Indeed but as someone points out above they have lots of ways of doing this that are much less self destructive.
The notion that domestic political problems can be overcome by finding an external enemy to fight (Sars-CoV2 in this case, if the general idea is correct) predates Marx by quite some time. This already drove the foreign policy of Napoleon I and was recognized as such at that time (between about 1800 and 1815).
Of course lockdowns have been busy choking our economy as well
The Truth About Inflation – What They WONT Tell You!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKKXRG79-B0
Godfrey Bloom Official
Yellow Boards By The Road
BUILD BACK FREEDOM …
Wednesday 17th August 12pm to 1pm
Yellow Boards
Junction A332 Windsor Rd &
A330 Winkfield Road,
Ascot SL5 7UL
Friday 19th August 11am to 12pm
Yellow Boards
A3095 Foresters Way &
B3430 Nile Mile Ride
Bracknell RG40 3DR
Stand in the Park Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am – make friends & keep sane
Wokingham
Howard Palmer Gardens Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Bracknell
South Hill Park, Rear Lawn, RG12 7PA
Telegram http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
China’s attempt to depopulate? Nothing else makes sense. Pldny of ccp pockets lined by, guess who. Anyone who thinks their gov’ts care about them, cannot ignore the last two years of their lives.