China in 2022 - A shaky year

2022 was a momentous year for China, backstopped by an end-of-year scrabble to survive the pandemic of COVID-19 from December onwards. What the sequence of events taught the world is that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) may be incredibly good at controlling its population, but it is not so accomplished at governing people.

2022 was a momentous year for China, backstopped by an end-of-year scrabble to survive the pandemic of COVID-19 from December onwards. What the sequence of events taught the world is that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) may be incredibly good at controlling its population, but it is not so accomplished at governing people. The majority of 2022 was spent in tight lockdowns and oppressive restrictions to control the spread of the coronavirus. Yet, after three years of draconian treatment, there was a growing grassroots sense of frustration with the authorities, and this boiled over into street protests after a fire killed a number of locked-up residents in a Urumqi building fire.

Almost overnight, the government abandoned its zero-COVID policy. After investing so much time, resources, and propaganda into this policy, it was bewildering how swiftly the government relaxed regulations, and how COVID-19 exploded in China's virus-virgin population. Indeed, nobody really knows how rampant the virus is, since the government stopped publishing data. One thing is clear, however - the situation is dire, with thousands upon thousands of deaths eventuating. Several Chinese people interviewed by ANI reported relatives who have caught COVID, been hospitalized, or died from it. Yet "COVID" is not being marked as the reason on death certificates, but rather alternative terms such as "sudden death". No other country was able to successfully wield a COVID-elimination policy. That the CCP did so for three long years was a stupendous achievement of authoritarian control. However, it was not a viable long-term strategy, since individuals and thethe economy suffered terribly.

Yet responsibility for the raging pandemic rests with the CCP. Instead of investing in better vaccines, intensive care unit capacity, medicine stocks, and vaccination campaigns for the elderly, the government focused on testing, quarantine camps, lockdowns, and praising the superiority of "socialism with Chinese characteristics" over Western democracies. It is difficult to predict the overall effect of COVID on China. It will likely suffer the first peak of infections in mid-January and a second in early March. Airfinity, a predictive science intelligence company, estimates that cases could reach 3.7 million per day in January, and 4.2 million in March. Currently, there are probably 5,000+ daily deaths, whereas Beijing, has been disingenuously reporting an average of justseven deaths per week. More and more countries are imposing travel restrictions or testing for travelers from China, as fears of new COVID variants mount. The CCP allowed travelers to spread the coronavirus around the world in early 2020, and it is doing precisely the samenow. Yet Beijing will continue to complain that it is being unfairly picked upon, even though it previously imposed harsh travel bans on anyone trying to get into China.

China's micromanagement of COVID evaporated almost instantaneously. There was no indication this would happen, no rationale was supplied and there was no graduated strategy to ease the sting during the depths of winter. It just happened. Likely, the CCP recognized that its controversial policy was helping exacerbate the severest crisis faced since 1989. Chairman Xi Jinping in his New Year's Eve speech offered cold comfort to thousands suffering without hospital care or adequate medicine. Indeed, he tried to make the government's tragic abdication of responsibility appear as though it was all carefully planned. "Since COVID-19 struck, we have put the people first and put life first all along. Following a science-based and targeted approach, we have adapted our COVID response in light of the evolving situation to protect the life and health of the people tothe greatest extent possible."

Xi continued: "With extraordinary efforts, we have prevailed over unprecedented difficulties and challenges, and it has not been an easy journey for anyone. We have now entered a new phase of the COVID response where tough challenges remain. Everyone is holding on with great fortitude, and the light of hope is right in front of us. Let's make an extra effort to pull through, as perseverance and solidarity meanvictory." China has resigned itself to letting infections peak as quickly as possible - no matter how many die - so that the country can push on and return to some form of normality. Certainly, the economy's health looms large in the CCP's calculus. The economy will be impacted by the virus in the short term, compoundingchallenges such as flagging exports and a prolonged property sector crisis. GDP is growing below targets, at just 3% for the first three quarters of 2022, and government efforts have not propped up sagging business or consumer confidence. Indeed, totalretail sales dropped 0.1 per cent year on year from January-November 2022. Beijing has engaged in an "all-out" infrastructure campaign to revive the economy.

Economists vary in their forecasts, but an average of about 5 per cent GDP growth for 2023 is quoted as a ballpark figure. However, China will have to contend with a looming global recession. Xi in his speech tried to sound optimistic. "The Chinese economy enjoys strong resilience, tremendous potential, and great vitality. The fundamentals sustaining its long-term growth have remained strong. As long as we stay confident and strive for progress while maintaining stability, we will realize the goals we have set." Yet COVID-19 seriously took the gloss off Xi's high-tide mark for 2022 - his coronation into a third five-year term as head of the CCP at the 20th National Congress in October. It was the CCP's most important meeting in its five-year cycle. The National Congress was a carefully orchestrated event, and who could forget the spectacle of former leader Hu Jintao being escorted out of the meeting on the closing day, as Xi humiliated this now powerless figure? Xi has installed all his own men in the corridors of power, and his position as a paramount leader seems impregnable.

Unfortunately, the personality cult glorifying Xi as almost a Chinese deity shows no sign of lessening. Yet it was peculiar how when China succumbed to COVID-19 throughout December, Xi simply disappeared from view. It seemed that the suffering of the people and strain on the healthcare system were remote and abstract concepts for Xi. With a small number of protestors even verbally abusing Xi and the CCP on streets in November, there could be some kind of boomerang effect against Xi. He returned China to absolutist central control, so some blame for the nation's current morass must surely stick to him no matter how much he distances himself from hisunderlings. According to the China Dissent Monitor, there were 1,013 cases of dissent in China from 1 June to 1 December 2022. Some 43 per cent of these revolved around housing disputes, while 17 per cent were labor-related. Just 16 per cent related to pandemic policies, and only 9 per cent of the protests featured more than 100 members. Just 5 per cent of protests weretargeted at the central government, and 32 per cent at local governments.

Did Xi's New Year's Eve speech give a nod to the people's malcontent? He urged: "Ours is a big country. It is only natural for different people to have different concerns or hold different views on the same issue. What matters is that we build consensus through communication and consultation. When the 1.4 billion Chinese work with one heart and one mind, and stand in unity with a strong will, no task will be impossibleand no difficulty insurmountable." Of course, consensus, communication, and consultation are anathema to the CCP. Nonetheless, the spontaneous outburst of protests is cause for concern for the CCP; rather than promoting their welfare, the party is afraid of the people. 2022 started out well for China, with a highlight being the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics in February. Although marred by a diplomatic boycott by countries such as the USA, China used the event to showcase its political system. Yet the sporting spectacle was swiftly overtaken by President Vladimir Putin's want on invasion of Ukraine. Throughout, China has adamantly refused to criticize Russia's war. Jarringly, Hua Chunying, Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs, tweeted: "China stands ready to join hands with Russia and all other progressive forces around the world who oppose hegemony and power politics, to reject any unilateralism, protectionism and bullying, firmly safeguard national sovereignty, security, and development interests and uphold international fairness and justice."

Such blithe words cannot hide such sickening sentiments, that Beijing has aligned itself with a warmongering regime. Yet this is par for the course for Xi. In 2013, on his first overseas trip as CCP General Secretary to visit Putin in Moscow, Xi stated their two countries were aiming for "a fair and just world". By the time Xi had a virtual meeting with Putin on 30 December 2022, Xi gloated that their comprehensivestrategic partnership had "grown more mature and resilient". China deliberately spreads Russian disinformation, such as the conspiracy theory that there are US Army bio labs in Ukraine. In fact, China and Russia inked ministerial agreements in July 2021 to support each other's news coverage, narratives and propaganda. China's "wolf warrior" form of diplomacy - as exemplified by Chinese Consul-General Zheng Xiyuan in Manchester, the UK, when he and his thugs attempted torough up protestors in October 2022 - shows no signs of abating.

Indeed, the bullying from other countries, and China's brutal treatment of Uyghurs and Tibetans, and the continued suppression of Hong Kong on the home front, continue to raise the hackles of many in the international community. Hong Kong's National Security Law passed on 30 June 2020, has successfully stifled and bludgeoned all forms of protest or political self-expression in the former British colony. Some 20,900 residents departed Hong Kong from mid-2019 to mid-2020, another 89,200 in the following twelve months, and 113,000 from mid-2021 to mid-2022. Many people left the territory, after contemplating a bleak future there under the CCP's unforgiving rule. Xi can say, "We stand firm on the right side of history and on the side of human civilization and progress." Yet so many fled Hong Kong because they saw the CCP as both regressive and repressive. China continues to invest heavily in the People's Liberation Army (PLA), and itsnuclear weapon arsenal is receiving an incredible boost in size. The USA's 2022 China Military Power Report estimated that the PLA Rocket Force has some 400 nuclear warheads, but the Pentagon predicted that it will have 1,500 by 2035. Along the way, the PLA will triple its nuclear warhead stockpile in the space of just a decade.

The threat against Taiwan has heightened, with the PLA becoming even more belligerent after Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, had an overnight visit to Taipei in early August. Alarmingly, the PLA enforced exclusion zones hurled missiles and conducted sea and air exercises all around Taiwan. China used this pretext to make such exercises a norm and to establish a new baseline for militarily coercive activities. It is now a matter of routine for the PLA to send bombers and fighters on forays into Taiwan's air defense identification zone, as Beijing tightens the psychological screws on Taipei. China returned to confrontations along the Indian border too, with the most publicized incident occurring near Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh on 9 December. Expect China to continue such frontier probes to test Indian resolve in the coming year. There was also news late in 2022 that China is reclaiming land on four more reefs (Eldad Reef, Lankiam Cay, Whitsun Reef and Sandy Cay) in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.

Such reclamation and militarization is direct contravention of a 2002 ASEAN-China agreement, but of course, Beijing has never balked from riding roughshod over international law and regional agreements before. China will continue to robustly assert claims in the South China Sea in 2023, as underscored by the dangerous antics of a PLA Navy J-11 fighter flying dangerously close to an American RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft on 21 December 2022. It is almost unprecedented that the USA should release sensitive video footage of such incidents, and this suggests a change in American policy. The PLA is acting belligerently, and with such actions becoming more common, the USA seems set topublicize this worrying trend. In 2022, China also gained a worrying foothold in the Solomon Islands, and a military presence should be expected at Ream Naval Base in Cambodia. Although Xi thought he was adding to his luster through most of the year, Xi's credibility ended up badly tarnished. The CCP and its leader may attempt to deflect blame or to focus attention elsewhere, but it is patently clear that the Chinese system is not better or more efficient than Western ones. Authoritarian systems might exert Orwellian control, but they are not designed to help the people.

Not even China's sophisticated internet police have been able to staunch snowballing criticism of the government's COVID policy. Xi's third term got off to a very shaky start. Unfortunately, 2023 could be unpredictable and volatile for the world, as Xi continues to orient himself with Russia, and as he diverts attention from his own woes at home. (ANI)

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)