Why doesn’t China have a second wave?

[Custardcream67]

China had the initial wave of infections early 2020 then hardly any cases since. Their population is much bigger than UK. How can they have it so under control. Seems suspicious to me.

Joswis
Exactly!
My dh’s colleagues continuously tell him to bring his family back to China as the uk is not safe.

@HelloMissus

This is a country where the populace dare to even mention the revolution and the people that died during it.

How do you think the state controls them?

Strange that. I learned ALL about it from the people while I was teaching there.

They are not puppets. The state controls them now by giving them a very good standard of living. They do not see western democracy as we do. They think the way our governments switch and change and are corrupt and are unstable.

One of my friends explained to me how her family were dirt poor farmers before Mao. Now, they are able to access free university education and she and her 2 siblings have all been to university and are professionals. Their parents were poor but the children have moved up into the middle class.

THAT is how the state controls them. Yes, there is an iron fist inside the velvet glove, but for the vast majority, they don't need to use it.

@Twintub

They have recently had one of their big holidays lots of travelling about so they may see a spike there is an outbreak in Shanghai at the moment. But as others have said they are rule followers and they also had a sophisticated app that alerted any contact with positives and you needed codes etc to go out. They use technology in a far more advanced way than the Uk

Oh! That is interesting. Let me ask my Shanghai friends about it.

Because, while there are many many reasons to criticise and distrust the chinese government, they did what needed to be done and continue to do what needs to be done to suppress the virus.

Our government didn't. And it's not because you and I, the british public cant follow rules. We can and do.

Friends who live in china have reported from the start about measures taken and are aghast at how the UK government are showing so little care.

There’s a lot of uneducated stuff about China here.

Follow Stephen McDonnell on Twitter, he’s the BBC’s Beijing correspondent. This is a post of his at a bar last week twitter.com/stephenmcdonell/status/1322556342616272898?s=21

On the 'rule following' theories one friend has reported seeing campus bound students climbing the fence to get out and another friend that their child nursery has not done the proper paperwork to be official but that it is not unusual to do this and sort it out later if/when caught. To divide us as rule followers or not is pretty simplistic.

Joswis I think you do the Chinese people a great disservice to say they go along with state brutality for a better standard of living.

Their compliance is built on the death and torture of millions. And daily propaganda.

I Was in China last September when the unrest in Hong Kong was at its height.
It was never reported on Chinese television and the foreign broadcasts allowed were simply blacked out during reports on HK.
I asked many people I was working with - what do you think happens during those blackouts and they just shrugged and said ‘things we don’t talk about’.
That’s not ambivalence, that’s fear.

@HelloMissus

Joswis I think you do the Chinese people a great disservice to say they go along with state brutality for a better standard of living.

Their compliance is built on the death and torture of millions. And daily propaganda.

I Was in China last September when the unrest in Hong Kong was at its height.
It was never reported on Chinese television and the foreign broadcasts allowed were simply blacked out during reports on HK.
I asked many people I was working with - what do you think happens during those blackouts and they just shrugged and said ‘things we don’t talk about’.
That’s not ambivalence, that’s fear.

Exactly I saw a bbc news interview and none of them were allowed to give an interview sorry but the CCP are evil ... the Muslim camps they run if true .. makes me sick ! Evil

HelloMissus, you could say the same thing about the USA. I lived there during the apartheid protests, boycotts and when Mandela was freed.

Nothing on the TV at all. Not only were the population not informed, they just weren't interested.

I am obviously aware there is a downside to China. But it isn't the way the west paints it there. I have friends in Hong Kong. I am aware of what is going on. But are you aware of how the British are to blame for abandoning the Hong Kongers? And those are words of native-born Hong Kongers. Britain abandoned us.

And what about the UK? Wanting to kick out the Windrush generation and their descendants.

I am not excusing massive human rights violations. But there is never only one side to a story and the west is VERY far from perfect.

Yes, WaffleyVersatile. When I lived there I had a friend who ran a CHAIN of illegal preschools. Nothing registered. No taxes. No tracking.

She was a millionaire. Chinese born and bred. A true entrepreneur.

Joswis of course everyone knows about the injustices elsewhere. Because we discuss them. Because we challenge those in power about them. We protest. We march. We report.

That doesn’t happen in China and it’s dismissive to say it’s because they like their iPads.

An old colleague of mine now works in China. Their lockdowns were incredibly strict, as was their quarantine process. Friend was out of China on a holiday when their lockdown began and she wasn't able to return. In fact she came back to the UK to family - she was surprised at how easy that was to do. When she and her family returned a few weeks later it was to incredibly strict rules - they could't leave their apartment for a fortnight, A camera was installed outside their front door. They had to phone and report their temperatures twice a day. If any of them, including the young children, had a high temperature that person would have been taken to a special hospital/covid hotel until 'safe' to leave.

The rules have been very strict. They knew some people who caught it but not many in total, and none who ended up very ill fortunately.

She is now, however, back teaching full time in schools, as is her husband and their two children are back to school too - no masks or SDing now.

@HelloMissus

Joswis of course everyone knows about the injustices elsewhere. Because we discuss them. Because we challenge those in power about them. We protest. We march. We report.

That doesn’t happen in China and it’s dismissive to say it’s because they like their iPads.

Your words, not mine.

We may well protest. But our protesting does nothing. Look at the shower we are stuck with right now. Bunging billions to their mates while the British people die in tens of thousands around them, unable to access the services the billions have paid for. We can say what we want. But it changes nothing.

How much better off are we really?

They welded doors shut on apartment buildings....

They weren't welded in in any of the places my friend knew of. However there were cameras set up outside their flat doors. Friends could leave parcels for them on the door mat. They could open their door to accept those and other deliveries, including food and medicines, and even non essential items. Their movements could be tracked.

@MissMarplesGlove

the freedom to
the freedom from

This is an interesting and important point. Western media always frames everything which happens in China through the lens of the government, but this is naive and ignorant (sometimes purposefully so I believe). China is a millennia old civilization with millennia old culture and social customs and framework. It has experienced period of great prosperity but also periods of great chaos.

In China, “freedom from” is usually valued above “freedom to”. That is not a CCP thing, it is a China thing.

Currently, Chinese people have freedom from hunger, freedom from violent crime, freedom from foreign aggression, freedom from absolute poverty (for the vast majority), freedom from technological impotence (see two Chinese universities entering the global top 20 + space exploration + 5g etc). And not just “getting by”, but in fact China thriving in all of those areas. China has always historically been willing to accept one unifying all powerful ruler if they can provide this kind of harmony and prosperity. “Freedom to” is important to, but there is no “freedom to” without first “freedom from”, something which China is currently enjoying to an extent which it has arguably never previously been to achieve to such an extent in its entire history (even during the great Tang, Han, dynasties there was still great poverty in parts).

So when a Westerner come along and says, from their Western ideological perspective and view of history, that “the regime is terrible” or “I’d hate to live in China”, 99% of Chinese people will just laugh at their arrogance and ignorance.

Joswis, the UK didn't "abandon" Hong Kong, it was handed over as legally required after the 100 year treaty with China ended. What do you think the British government should have done- just stayed, despite it having agreed decades earlier? How would the world react to a country refusing to leave a territory they had colonised?

And China signed an agreement that while Hong Kong would be Chinese territory, it would continue to have a degree of autonomy regarding laws and human rights

Unfortunately China has broken this agreement but I can't see how it's the fault of the UK

I appreciate that, being British. But that isn't how we are seen in Hong Kong.

In 1997 there were celebrations in Hong Kong because of the British leaving, who wouldn't be pleased to see the back of their colonisers? It just turns out that China has no regard for agreements that it changes its mind about and no regard to the opinions of the people of HK. It's shit for many people in Hong Kong but it still doesn't make it true that they were abandoned by the UK

Their media is heavily controlled

Oh and Joswis in your original post you stated it as a fact, not as how it is seen by some people in Hong Kong , which is why I posted about the 1997 handover as I assumed you knew nothing about it

We may well protest. But our protesting does nothing. Look at the shower we are stuck with right now. Bunging billions to their mates while the British people die in tens of thousands around them, unable to access the services the billions have paid for. We can say what we want. But it changes nothing.

Of course we are nothing like China and I wonder why the derailment attempts.

We have democratic elections and more than a party to vote for.

The Chinese people don’t.

Littleposh, if you believe we have a free media, you are totally deluded. The western main stream media determined the result of our most recent 'free' election. Our country is run by an unelected man.

I agree Chardonnays, some posters are very defensive about China, and the constant attempts to draw parallels between the Chinese and British governments is just....very odd

'Of course we are nothing like China and I wonder why the derailment attempts.'

It's not a derailment any more than discussing the Chinese govt in HK etc. The question was about why china is apparently doing well at suppressing covid.

There are now more domestic flights in China than there were before the pandemic. An indication of how well things are going there?