I feel like I’m uniquely positioned to give some information about what’s happening in China right now and how we got here. I will try to be as nuanced and objective as possible. There is unfortunately, not too much objective information that western audiences have easy access to. I also like this site enough to make an effort to provide some info here.
I’ve been in Shenzhen since the start of the pandemic. After the initial outbreak in Wuhan, the rest of China was more or less normal since March of 2020. Classes and work was in person by late spring/the summer of 2020. There were sporadic outbreaks from time to time but usually found and eliminated with less than 100 total cases in a city. However, with the new variants, maintaining “Zero Covid” is increasingly difficult even with strict border controls, high vaccination rates, and sophisticated contact tracking. Now, the outbreak is not just in one or two cities but in over a dozen major cities nationwide at varying degrees of severity. They are pretty much all Omicron outbreaks.
When Omicron hit Hong Kong at the beginning of the year, the infection spilled over to Shenzhen and then to other cities in China. After the 2022 Chinese New Year, Shenzhen has not been able to stamp out the Omicron outbreak (about two dozen positive confirmations a day) despite DAILY citywide tests for about a month. From my perspective, the government is doing a one week lockdown with 3 rounds of full population testing as a last ditch effort.
Many of our beloved flashlight manufacturers are shut down because of this. I don’t believe policies can be in place to shut down factories for longer than a few weeks - the economic cost will be too great. China has a growth target of 5.5% which was just announced by Li Keqiang at the two sessions meeting and it will be impossible to hit with prolonged lockdowns.
Unfortunately, there is no clear and well-communicated offramp from “Zero Covid” for China. I personally would like an end to Zero Covid so I could travel internationally again. However, I also understand that even though China’s population is very highly vaccinated (around 3 billion doses or 90% coverage), the inactivated virus vaccine is not as effective as the MRNA based ones. Omicron caused tons of breakthrough infections in the west, and in countries like Australia, Japan, and South Korea despite the more effective vaccines. Even with the low predicted infection fatality rate of Omicron (probably close to 0.005-0.1%), in a population the size of China, it could mean 1 million deaths.
My prediction is that Shenzhen will be back up and running soon and your flashlights should start shipping again. However, Shenzhen is the richest city in China with the most resources and the rest of China will have an even tougher time with Omicron. Omicron could eventually spill back into Shenzhen from other parts of China. Although, the transmission rate should slow down somewhat over the summer season, and spillovers from other parts of the world should also lessen as Omicron recedes worldwide.
