Professor, thank you so much for joining us.
Maybe just broaden it out for a little bit first about what lessons that we're
learning when it comes to China here. This this Covid year old strategy was a
signature policy of President Xi Jinping.
He was striving to be a star. That's go to role model and fighting
Covid. And now we're seeing protests on the
streets. What does that tell you about where this
current strategy is going to go? Harold Ford Well, I think to 0 Covid
policy may have reached reached the end of its its political viability now
because we have people turning over the barriers, going out and upsetting
testing, testing huts in the streets of Beijing.
Right. These are the politically more savvy,
more connected people in the country. So patience is really worn thin to the
to the very end. And they can send the police out, as
they've done today, and lock down subways and keep people off the streets
and arrest some demonstrators. But really, the only viable option now,
I think, will be to begin to relax the zero Covid restrictions to some degree.
And James, I know you have a focus on Shery Ahn.
I just wonder, there's this these photos were triggered by that fire in Urumqi.
This was a place in Shanghai where we saw where the most stringent sorts of
restrictions are when it comes to Covid 0.
How is it different there versus what we're seeing across China?
Although the lockdowns and the quarantines and the lockdowns and
changing went on for longer, really, than anywhere else.
Over one hundred days, you know, since the summer.
And there are very wide spread across the entire region.
And and what we can tell, they were implemented even more strictly than in
other places. So that means that people were locked
into their compounds for longer periods of time.
Doors were sealed on apartments, entry ways blocked up.
There were many, many reports from particularly the weaker were people, not
Han people in the region, that they were running out of food in their
requirements. And of course, it's very hard for
journalists and anyone to get in there to know about this.
But we saw similar things in Shanghai. Right.
Very, very rich place in the center of China's Metropole.
And so it's not at all surprising that this could be going on in Shin Young in
the fire. Of course, that was the catalyst for
these recent wave of protests all across China.
You know, that fire took place in a part of Urumqi, the capital of the region
that is mainly weaker. And the authorities didn't announce
this. But it's quite clear that people all
over China, where most people were aware that these victims of the fire, at least
10, but maybe as many as dozens of victims weaker as themselves.
And of course, there are tragic stories of rape of a family mother with children
who were who died in this fire. James, but
isn't it Miss Inflation to look at the crackdown in Shenzhen province and then
connect that with zero Covid policies around the country?
Well, of course, when you say the crackdown, we've looking back five years
to the mass internment of over a million weaker people to forced labor
initiatives, which you've all heard about and which have brought sanctions
to there to the region, from the international community.
I think the connection now is being made in the minds, I think of the protesters.
Right. Who are aware that that we growers are
involved, maybe not explicitly, but they know that these policies of locking
people up in their in their in their homes or separating people from their
families to go be quarantined in a different place of following people
around to digital surveillance, of using your cell phone as a way of controlling
movements. You know, all of these things which are
used for the zero Covid policies are actually technologies and techniques
that were pioneered in Shin John, for this crackdown, for this repression of
the weaker people. Some of the same companies, in fact,
that have been rolling out the software platforms and the camera systems and
others are some of those same the same companies that are involved.
So, James. Yes.
Joe, I want to get a sense of what Xi Jinping goes from this, because, you
know, we had him in his 20 21 New Year's address, really flexing, if you will,
and touting that how he'd save China from Covid by his actions.
And now you've got him perhaps caught in a dogmatic trap way.
He cannot move from that. What is the deal with him?
How has he been damaged by this, if at all?
Well, I don't know. That may remain to be seen.
It seems like perhaps some of the protests are are calming down.
I think if he is able to see the problems with the
doubling down on zero Covid and begin to release some of these restrictions to
let people out of their apartment blocks, particularly in the main cities
of China, then he may well certainly weather this and that.
We may not see greater effects.
But I do think it's quite remarkable how quickly the rhetoric of the protesters
changed from, first of all, grief for the weaker victims.
Then secondly, release us from Covid restrictions to then very, very quickly
to calls for for freedom, for democracy, for relieving, for elimination of
censorship and those kinds of things. So in a way, I think, you know, people
have sent a message to the party and to Xi Jinping.