andrew polk
@andrewpolk81
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Co-founder @triviumchina. China economist in DC, after 10 years in Beijing. Erstwhile Texan. Check out my work here: https://t.co/bQR2IvJ3HP
Beijing
Joined September 2011
RT @ryanl_hass: US-PRC relations are off track. Risks of conflict are rising, while benefits from the relationship for American and Chinese….
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RT @gdp1985: My condolences to the investors who deluded themselves into believing Xi was joking in his work report. .
bloomberg.com
China will “unswervingly” adhere to its current Covid controls as the country faces increasingly serious outbreaks, health officials said, damping hopes that Beijing will ease its stringent policies...
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I’m no big @elonmusk fan. But the commentary on this move from people who’ve never run a business is amazing. If implemented, on a very conservative projection, it brings in $1 billion in new annual revenue, a boost of 20%. I’d take that over “considerable economic value” any day.
Great example of how weird Musk's plan to charge power users for verification is. AOC has 13.5 million followers. When she writes a tweet like this, it generates millions of impressions, creating considerable economic value for Twitter. And he wants to charge her $8 to do it!
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Last weekend there was a coup. This weekend zero-covid will be dropped at any moment. Thank god there are only two more weekends before the party congress.
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Xi and co not wearing masks at National Day celebration is not a signal of coming Covid policy relaxation. Here’s Xi in Liaoning six weeks ago. Covid control policy has only tightened since then.
Senior leaders, including President Xi, did not wear masks during today’s National Day celebration events. Onshore investors broadly perceive this as another important signal for a potential recalibration of zero covid next year.
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RT @NeysunM: Agree and disagree with Bill here. Agree in the sense that, of course, XJP policies and especially "zero COVID" right now are….
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RT @NeysunM: Me, writing in @ChinaFile in Aug 2020 >> The @FT just published today . (Not a dig. Just sayin I’ve been howling in the wind a….
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Any way you slice it, to us it all means that China’s zero-COVID policy will be in place well into 2023. And that means all attendant disruptions to life, business, travel, economic growth, etc – will stick around for a while as well. 15/15.
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Key takeaway: Beijing will have a slightly higher tolerance for COVID-related social unrest after the party congress – but that doesn’t mean officials will significantly adjust the current calculus regarding the tradeoffs between economic growth and COVID-related lockdowns. 14/15.
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And again: Once that decision is made, it will take months just to message that it is coming – let alone to gradually put the new policies into place. 13/15.
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Instead, officials will need to see a combination of extremely low rates of infection, subdued hospitalization and death rates, increased rates of inoculation, widely available therapeutics, and (ideally) increasingly weaker variants before changing course. 12/15.
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Similarly, there is no single metric either – whether that be vaccination rates for the general population, or the elderly, or a certain amount of available therapeutics – that officials are watching in order to kick off a policy adjustment. 11/15.
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Rather than looking for a clear-cut pivot point, coinciding with some arbitrary date or event, we are looking for COVID policy adjustments to take place via step-by-step, gradual technical tweaks – much like the shortened quarantine requirements for inbound travelers in June10/15.
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Equally important to keep in mind is that China’s leaders aren't working on an artificial deadline. There is no single milestone – whether a major political event or random date on the calendar – that policymakers are looking to as a pivotal moment to adjust pandemic policy. 9/15.
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Based on those requirements alone, the earliest possible window for any meaningful relaxation of China’s zero-COVID playbook would be in the spring of 2023 – a view we have held since the beginning of this year. 8/15.
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Again, a shift immediately after the congress is pretty much out of the question by this point because any future rollback must be carefully and thoroughly messaged – for several weeks, if not months – to lay the groundwork for a step-by-step, gradual adjustment to the policy7/15.
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For our money, it’s much more straightforward to define why – and when – the policy won’t get rolled back. Starting with the obvious: Zero-COVID ain’t going nowhere before the Party congress. 6/15.
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It is true that the risk calculation for senior leaders getting infected abroad seems to have changed. However, this is a necessary-but-insufficient condition for policymakers to abandon the zero-COVID playbook for the general population. 5/15.
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So in the short-term, people should not be on the lookout for a big policy announcement that will suddenly move things away from zero-Covid, but rather a major propaganda campaign to layout the groundwork for a policy change months later. 4/15.
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More importantly, because party leadership has tied itself so closely to the zero-Covid policy, there will have to be a months-long messaging campaign to prep the country for a shift in approach. There will be no sudden announcement that China is now “living with the virus.”3/15.
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