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China somewhat eases zero-COVID restrictions
The Graphic Truth: China's old vs. new zero-COVID
Change is afoot in China. Beijing’s zero-COVID containment strategy has been widely criticized at home and abroad, setting markets aflutter, and disrupting economies and supply chains worldwide. But now, just weeks after President Xi Jinping secured his norm-defying third term as CCP secretary-general, his new Politburo Standing Committee has issued changes to China’s zero-COVID policy. The news saw Hong Kong and mainland markets react positively, and online inbound flight bookings doubled overnight, but economists remain wary and are advising caution. We explore the differences between the two policies.
Podcast: The problem with China’s Zero COVID strategy
Listen: Xi Jinping's zero-COVID approach faces its toughest test to date with omicron. Why? Because China lacks mRNA jabs, and so few Chinese people have gotten COVID that overall protection is very low. A wave of lockdowns could disrupt the world's second-largest economy — just a month out from the Beijing Winter Olympics.
That could spell disaster for Beijing, Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, tells Ian Bremmer on the GZERO World podcast. If things get really bad, though, Huang believes China will pivot to living with the virus, especially as the cost of keeping zero COVID in the age of omicron becomes too high.
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No progress after US/NATO-Russia talks, Boris Johnson in trouble
First question, how is the crisis in this part of Europe developing?
Not good. There's been a week of intense diplomacy with talks in Geneva, and Brussels, and Vienna that produced virtually nothing. The Russian, sort of key demands are outrageously unrealistic. They know that is the case. The US is trying to engage them on somewhat different issues. We'll see if there's any prospect there, but it doesn't look too good. I think the likelihood is that we gradually will move into the phase of what the Russians call military technical measures, whatever that is.
Second question, is it really bad for Boris Johnson in the UK at the moment?
Yeah, it is really bad. I mean the latest revelation of sort of "bring your own booze" party at Downing Street during the heavy lockdown period has clearly dented his reputation. Primarily it's hurting the Conservative Party further. I still think he will be there to fight another day. But what remains to be seen is if he's going to be there at the end of the year.
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Belarus human rights abuses stacking up; Beirut blast one year later
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week with a look at the deteriorating human rights situation in Belarus, Delta variant woes, and Lebanon one year after the Beirut blast.
An Olympian refuses to return home to Belarus and an anti-Lukashenko activist has been found dead in Ukraine. What's going on?
Yeah. That anti-Lukashenko activist was found hanged in a park in Kiev. Once again, not exactly likely a suicide. These anti-Lukashenko activists have a way of turning up injured or dead. It's a horrible regime. Their friends are limited largely to the Russians. That's about it. The economic pressure is growing from Europe, from the United States, very coordinated. But the problem is a very hard to do much to Lukashenko when he has not only support of his military, but also the support of most of the workers in the country who aren't prepared to strike because they want to ensure they still have jobs. I expect this is going to continue, but human rights abuses are stacking up. It is nice to see that the Americans and the Europeans are coordinating policy as well as they have been.
How has Delta variant added to the COVAX woes?
Well, we've seen a lot more cases. I mean Florida, for example, right now, highest level of cases since this pandemic has started. Hospitalizations too. But not deaths. Death numbers across the country are still comparatively very low. That's also true in Europe. Why is that? That's because even though vaccines overall are not where they need to be in the United States, the people that are most vulnerable to dying, the seriously elderly, those with pre-existing conditions are also among the most likely, sensibly, to get vaccines. And so it was a consequence. Death numbers are still mercifully comparatively low, and I suspect they're going to stay low. Having said that, we don't know much about long COVID. We do know about 50% of the people that get symptoms have those symptoms persist. The healthcare costs of that, the psychological costs of that, the reality of the quality of life, it's deteriorating for a much longer period of time. That's what we worry about the most. The thing I'm most worried about globally is China, where they're locking down big cities in part because they have no tolerance for the pandemic to grow in China. But also because their vaccines really don't work against Delta variant. That could slow down the second largest economy in the world. Watch that over the next few months.
A year after the Beirut blast, what has changed in Lebanon? One of the biggest non-nuclear blasts in global history.
Answer is very little has changed. The investigation is going nowhere. One of the few things that various factions around the government can agree with is that they don't want to be tried for corruption by independent investigators so they've been slow rolling it. Economic collapse, not much international support. Emmanuel Macron, you'll remember the French president, went down said we're going to help these people. There's been very little international aid and no new conference trying to raise that support for Lebanon. They are close to becoming a failed state and maybe not a surprise given how bad both COVID and the financial crisis has hit a country that was already among the most poorly governed in the region and the world.
Ian Bremmer: spin vs reality of COVID-19 response
More than 50% of the planet is presently locked in place. Impact on the global economy is extraordinary. Oil prices in the floor - when you shut down global supply and demand for the economy, you don't need a lot of energy. And when you have a limited amount of places to store that energy, further production is nearly worthless.
Here in the United States, what has been politically, reasonably functional so far is about to become much less so. Those of you watching the White House press conference every day, and if you watch cable news right afterwards, that's a complete shit show. It's made for television, political theater and drama. But the actual policies we've seen from the United States so far, have been reasonably coordinated.
What do I mean by reasonably coordinated? Well, first on the finance side, Fed Chief Jay Powell has been very effective and early in not just getting rates down, but also providing credit lines where necessary across the economy. Fiscal stimulus has been fast, has been bipartisan. There's going to be more coming for small businesses and NGOs that had initial hundreds of billions depleted quite quickly. That looks pretty close to passage. And also the reality is the governors are in charge. The governors engaged in the shutdowns and they didn't do so politically. They engaged in shutdowns as they realized they needed to engage in shutdowns. That's been fairly straightforward.
The big problem was health care. That was less about politics than the fact that the United States didn't have testing and adequate stockpiles of health care materials. When the World Health Organization offered a test, the Americans didn't use it. To be fair, the Americans usually use local CDC produced tests. When it was clear that they weren't working, they could have gone to use the W.H.O. approved tests, like the Germans; we didn't. So, that hurt and it hurt that we were late in coordinating and stockpiling critical health care material. People were more worried that the health care systems weren't going to work. But ultimately, that equipment got there, the masks got there to the people that most needed them, the health care workers. And that meant that we didn't see large numbers of health care workers getting sick and dying like in Northern Italy. And you never saw triaging of large numbers of people that needed critical care.
Going forward, it's going to get a lot more political. I think for a few reasons: First, even though we have health care systems that have surged, we don't have adequate testing, to be able to say that quarantines have worked the way we want and that we know we can reopen economies. But the pressure to reopen economies is gonna be massive because people are suffering. They're suffering from not being able to get to work. They're suffering because the economy is falling apart. They're suffering because they don't have child care and kids can't go to school. So, the pressure to restart economies is going to be immense. That would be a lot easier to deal with if you had the contact tracing and tests that we have seen early stage in Germany or South Korea.
Some states will have tests up and running, others will not. They'll be coordinated locally, not nationally. And as they open, some states will need to close again. According to the White House guidelines, two weeks in order to go from phase one to phase two. You're going to see additional cases. That's going to be a serious problem. People will be going back to the hospital. That's already started in Kentucky. Is that going to slow them down? I hope it does. And the fact that this is being done state by state is going to prove very problematic as the US economy starts reopening. And as, and all epidemiologists expect this, we get second outbreaks either this summer or in fall and winter.
I think on the fiscal side: We've got the $2 trillion done. We're going to see another $2 trillion done. That is almost all relief for having shut down the economy. But what about stimulus? What about getting companies going again, getting the economy going again, as we start reopening summer and fall? That's not going to be easy. That's not going to be politically bipartisan and coordinated like the last few tranches have been. They'll be much more politicized as the election is getting closer. And that means either there's going to be massive overspending and waste, which will cause a political bunfight afterwards and big fights, or it means that you're not going to get adequate cash to those that most need it. And that's going to limit the ability of the American economy to rebound.
You're going to see similar problems in Europe. There's nowhere close to a willingness of the Europeans as a whole to provide the kind of redistribution of wealth of debt that would be required to get the Italians, the Spaniards, the Portuguese growing again. So, the Germans are running very well domestically, the Danes, the Netherlands. But you don't see that in the south. You don't see that in Eastern Europe. The potential of existential crisis for the eurozone is real.
Finally, China. I've discussed on previous videos how, one, they were responsible for the initial cover up, but two, once they started focusing on the crisis, they did an extraordinary job, empowered by technology, surveillance on the ground, able to quarantine and prevent significant additional outbreaks. No, I don't trust their numbers, but I do trust the fact that their economy is seriously up to speed again, in a way, the Americans and Europeans are gonna have a much harder time.
What's interesting is that internationally, the Chinese are playing much less of a leadership role than they are domestically, now that they have the crisis under more or less wraps. They made big press in initially sending healthcare equipment, medical equipment and personnel to the Europeans and other countries. It's been relatively small. There hasn't been big follow through. It's mostly press. This is not the Americans in Indonesia after the tsunami. It's not anywhere close to what the Chinese are capable of doing, what these countries actually need. That is causing a fair amount of blowback. We're seeing it from German media institutions, from the French, from the UK and especially from African countries, because a lot of Africans have been treated so badly on the ground. In China as well, the Chinese haven't handled that well. I've heard from heads of international financial institutions that the Chinese are nowhere close to offering the kind of money and support that these countries desperately need.
The Americans and Europeans are going to be focused on their own crises, and that's going to be massively expensive for these countries. So, their willingness to provide international aid will be more constrained. While the Chinese are less constrained. Second largest economy in the world, not providing leadership, very little cash they're going to be willing to put to put up. Which means the developing world is going to be really on the back foot in three and six months time. And also, the idea that China is going to be suddenly replacing the United States, providing leadership, you saw in The Economist magazine this week, China winning out of coronavirus, well, it's clear that the Chinese economy is doing much better. Their growth this year, next year will look a lot better than the Americans, Europeans. They will be gaining on the Americans in terms of the gap in size of economy and impact of the economy. But in terms of providing international leadership, there I don't see the Chinese playing much of a role at all. And it's important not to get ahead of of ourselves on that one.