The Chinese government can still make policies that meet their citizens' expectations — but it will need to change course fast.
People protest against zero-covid in Beijing, November 27, 2022. Credit: The Yomiuri Shimbun via AP Images
In the first two years of the global pandemic, China’s model of lockdowns, mass testing and algorithmically-driven quarantine provided an alternative path for controlling Covid that effectively restricted the virus’s spread. Yet last week’s protests across several Chinese cities have shown the limits of the model, as the economy weakens and anger at the government’s restrictive policies boils over.
A root problem in current policy making is that decisions are increasingly made w
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