What is the Environmental, Social, and Governance effect of 400,000+ excess deaths a day over a month? Internal Chinese government documents suggest over 250 million cases in the first three weeks, across the country in December after COVID-zero protocols were disbanded from increasing social unrest. Others suggest a sitting average across two weeks at 37 million cases a day. Extrapolating the US's statistics onto China, a ~1.1% mortality rate with 10-15% incidence of Long-COVID yields 400 thousand deaths and 30 to 45 million disabled, so far. The image of the dystopian brutality in previous COVID-Zero lockdowns emanating from social media channels that weren't blocked out from government censors revealed the extent a nation would go through in order to prevent what is currently happening. From a humanitarian standpoint, the pain and suffering of the Chinese people during this time is incalculable and irrefutable.
Mathematically, these numbers are ideal and optimistic; healthcare in China is as diverse as America's major hospitals vs rural community, except numbers far in excess. Staff, equipment, general education levels, ability to buffer and support - all at drastically reduced levels in a country that has failed to hit reasonable vaccination levels with an ineffective vaccine. Socially, 400 thousand homes a day losing at least someone, and millions more taking a hit to productive members and increasing in burden. Economically, whatever lockdowns shuttered commerce is just the start. Short-term consumerism will be chaotic as essential goods struggle to meet essential needs, on the back of behaviours befitting a scene of crumbling organization. Long-term will suffer as 1+% of the population exits stage right quickly, and the potential tens of millions dealing with a new disability preventing maximum economic output, or even any.
Environmentally, the Megatropolis has failed. Early COVID in America was centered on dense-Urban populations, with New York City facing some of the worst numbers resulting in National Guard being called in to medically treat the living and sanitarily remove the dead. China has ten cities bigger than NYC, and 40 more just under to 25+% of the size. High-density environments carry outsized risks in disease transmission, as a single cough reaches far more susceptible hosts for disease progression. Aside from the obvious, previous studies on China's COVID issues with urban environments has revealed serious regulatory failures in high-rise plumbing that enabled aerosolized-COVID from wastewater within apartments to spread across the building. The social unrest and riots in the streets that forced the CCP from COVID-zero saw millions congregating on the street in super-spreader events.
Governance, or rather Government, failed. Behaviours by the Chinese government to reduce the likelihood of this specific event, and to reduce total COVID levels across the nation, failed. The Chinese government has failed to prevent a catastrophic-COVID event, and the Chinese people are and will continue to suffer from it. No good deed goes unpunished, which says little for bad deeds done for "good" reasons. Unfavourable and unsupported lockdowns were a necessary evil to give the Chinese government more time to establish preventative measures, medicines, and environments to enable reduced-transmission without preventing social activity. Furthermore, the riots that led to the abandonment of the lockdowns were only stopped by government acquiescence, which means that whatever next step the government chooses to do will be done on the back of an angry populace. Balancing the economic and healthcare needs of the largest nation on Earth is hard enough, doing it on the back of a persistent tract of failures will be a dance.
Russia's continued attacks on Ukraine carries a risk of social unrest leading to dissolution of the nation; secluded and deprived regions being scoured for bodies and cannon fodder are increasingly rising up against Putin's regime. While these events carry more risks on the frontline, and reveal themselves with Russian-on-Russian violence in Ukraine, dissatisfaction and anger continues to build as graveyards fill up. China has been unified for millennia, and are made up of diverse regions and peoples that carry this patchwork engrained culturally. Despite moderate runs of anti-individualism, there is little to suggest a greater "falling apart" would happen - but that doesn't mean the Communist party gets to celebrate.
China's COVID-surge is just one facet of a nation struggling in the times. Tensions have been rising amid economic issues across the globe, naturally occuring as friction between sovereign's builds in a bipolar environment. An economy built on manufacturing everything else for everyone else is fragile as reshoring begins, and rising tensions between China and regional partners has only accelerated that. China winning an invasion on Taiwan isn't the same as Russia and Ukraine - China's military strength removes most of the guesswork on success, but that success itself would result in greater issues of international cooperation for a country so focused on being the economic center of the world. Bipolar to America's financial center of the world; and this distinction carries the greatest importance for the future. Economic sanctions on Russia elucidated the totality of the situation, China's large stockpiles of other sovereign's government debt and bills is only as good as the willingness of those other sovereign's to respect that debt. If China wants to continue to play any game on the world stage, it will need to continue to play by the greater game's rules. Russia believed it had the strength to break these, to which it failed and will continue to fail until the government ultimately fails.
The global property market is popping, with very different effects among the parties. If America's housing crisis can be summarized as too little housing at too high prices, China's is too much housing at too high prices. Recent publications reveal over 90% of Chinese households own a home, with over 20% owning multiple homes. Various sources cite different numbers, but recent data suggests a greater than 40% ownership of 2, and 25% ownership of 3+ homes. Stories of China's "Ghost cities" have been circulating for decades, with several documentaries showcasing intimate portrayals of a government utilizing construction for GDP inflation. This obsession with numbers over reality is one of the greatest strengths China has, because the government does have the ability to create economic realities with those numbers. While most economists might cite wasteful spending on building regional transportation, high speed rail, and decentralized infrastructure across the gigantic nation - this infrastructure will enable diversified and de-localized population spreads with integrated and co-dependent economies. China's surplus on making everything for everyone else underpins a need for external demand. As that demand decays, China needs to build a system that benefits from intranational trade and internal demand. The government fully acknowledges this, CCP economists and strategists have been working on this for some time, but COVID belies the issues interpreting.
Medically, the mRNA vaccines provide significant protection against valid-COVID strains, and were made almost immediately post-genomic sequencing of the virus was made public. Peptide vaccines were slower to develop due to technological limitations, but are currently on the market. China failed to produce a nationalized version with similar efficacy, and failed to establish the mRNA technology to enable vaccine production. Scientifically, China relies on knowledge and technology transfer from others; as America and other nations continue their attempts to limit access to next-generation technologies, China's ability to create current-generation goods and services decreases. This is nearly two years of failure in securing and utilizing nascent technologies to prevent catastrophic COVID-surges, amid a top-down directive against foreign vaccines.
The ability to accurately forecast in China is done. The Black Swan among black swans has landed, and there are no longer guarantees of specific outcomes. 2022 saw Xi Jinping consolidate power into a blackhole, with the gravity of the times bringing extra pressure to a nation struggling to find a new path forward. Whether the government escapes the pull from their own failures isn't for current debate, as it is the action of the people that give the nation it's power, it's drive, it's ability to move forward. Whatever comes, may 2023 bring peace and health to the world, and to the Chinese people.
Selected References:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...articles/PMC7546956/
www.scmp.com/news/ch...mp-health-facilities
www.cnn.com/2022/12/...-intl-hnk/index.html
www.bloomberg.com/ne...million-people-a-day
Author's Note
Strain mutation will be extremely high given close-proximity of hosts across diverse immunological and pathological backgrounds; i.e. strains will mutate as they attempt to spread across people who have gotten various strains in the past with variable antibody levels and response. It is impossible to guess how various facets of COVID modulate, such as symptoms, but the virus has made significant modifications in RNA stability, replication levels, immune-stealth, evasion, etc. Many nations will and should institute travel bans to limit viral spread across large geographical distances, which will seriously afflict global markets.
Mathematically, these numbers are ideal and optimistic; healthcare in China is as diverse as America's major hospitals vs rural community, except numbers far in excess. Staff, equipment, general education levels, ability to buffer and support - all at drastically reduced levels in a country that has failed to hit reasonable vaccination levels with an ineffective vaccine. Socially, 400 thousand homes a day losing at least someone, and millions more taking a hit to productive members and increasing in burden. Economically, whatever lockdowns shuttered commerce is just the start. Short-term consumerism will be chaotic as essential goods struggle to meet essential needs, on the back of behaviours befitting a scene of crumbling organization. Long-term will suffer as 1+% of the population exits stage right quickly, and the potential tens of millions dealing with a new disability preventing maximum economic output, or even any.
Environmentally, the Megatropolis has failed. Early COVID in America was centered on dense-Urban populations, with New York City facing some of the worst numbers resulting in National Guard being called in to medically treat the living and sanitarily remove the dead. China has ten cities bigger than NYC, and 40 more just under to 25+% of the size. High-density environments carry outsized risks in disease transmission, as a single cough reaches far more susceptible hosts for disease progression. Aside from the obvious, previous studies on China's COVID issues with urban environments has revealed serious regulatory failures in high-rise plumbing that enabled aerosolized-COVID from wastewater within apartments to spread across the building. The social unrest and riots in the streets that forced the CCP from COVID-zero saw millions congregating on the street in super-spreader events.
Governance, or rather Government, failed. Behaviours by the Chinese government to reduce the likelihood of this specific event, and to reduce total COVID levels across the nation, failed. The Chinese government has failed to prevent a catastrophic-COVID event, and the Chinese people are and will continue to suffer from it. No good deed goes unpunished, which says little for bad deeds done for "good" reasons. Unfavourable and unsupported lockdowns were a necessary evil to give the Chinese government more time to establish preventative measures, medicines, and environments to enable reduced-transmission without preventing social activity. Furthermore, the riots that led to the abandonment of the lockdowns were only stopped by government acquiescence, which means that whatever next step the government chooses to do will be done on the back of an angry populace. Balancing the economic and healthcare needs of the largest nation on Earth is hard enough, doing it on the back of a persistent tract of failures will be a dance.
Russia's continued attacks on Ukraine carries a risk of social unrest leading to dissolution of the nation; secluded and deprived regions being scoured for bodies and cannon fodder are increasingly rising up against Putin's regime. While these events carry more risks on the frontline, and reveal themselves with Russian-on-Russian violence in Ukraine, dissatisfaction and anger continues to build as graveyards fill up. China has been unified for millennia, and are made up of diverse regions and peoples that carry this patchwork engrained culturally. Despite moderate runs of anti-individualism, there is little to suggest a greater "falling apart" would happen - but that doesn't mean the Communist party gets to celebrate.
China's COVID-surge is just one facet of a nation struggling in the times. Tensions have been rising amid economic issues across the globe, naturally occuring as friction between sovereign's builds in a bipolar environment. An economy built on manufacturing everything else for everyone else is fragile as reshoring begins, and rising tensions between China and regional partners has only accelerated that. China winning an invasion on Taiwan isn't the same as Russia and Ukraine - China's military strength removes most of the guesswork on success, but that success itself would result in greater issues of international cooperation for a country so focused on being the economic center of the world. Bipolar to America's financial center of the world; and this distinction carries the greatest importance for the future. Economic sanctions on Russia elucidated the totality of the situation, China's large stockpiles of other sovereign's government debt and bills is only as good as the willingness of those other sovereign's to respect that debt. If China wants to continue to play any game on the world stage, it will need to continue to play by the greater game's rules. Russia believed it had the strength to break these, to which it failed and will continue to fail until the government ultimately fails.
The global property market is popping, with very different effects among the parties. If America's housing crisis can be summarized as too little housing at too high prices, China's is too much housing at too high prices. Recent publications reveal over 90% of Chinese households own a home, with over 20% owning multiple homes. Various sources cite different numbers, but recent data suggests a greater than 40% ownership of 2, and 25% ownership of 3+ homes. Stories of China's "Ghost cities" have been circulating for decades, with several documentaries showcasing intimate portrayals of a government utilizing construction for GDP inflation. This obsession with numbers over reality is one of the greatest strengths China has, because the government does have the ability to create economic realities with those numbers. While most economists might cite wasteful spending on building regional transportation, high speed rail, and decentralized infrastructure across the gigantic nation - this infrastructure will enable diversified and de-localized population spreads with integrated and co-dependent economies. China's surplus on making everything for everyone else underpins a need for external demand. As that demand decays, China needs to build a system that benefits from intranational trade and internal demand. The government fully acknowledges this, CCP economists and strategists have been working on this for some time, but COVID belies the issues interpreting.
Medically, the mRNA vaccines provide significant protection against valid-COVID strains, and were made almost immediately post-genomic sequencing of the virus was made public. Peptide vaccines were slower to develop due to technological limitations, but are currently on the market. China failed to produce a nationalized version with similar efficacy, and failed to establish the mRNA technology to enable vaccine production. Scientifically, China relies on knowledge and technology transfer from others; as America and other nations continue their attempts to limit access to next-generation technologies, China's ability to create current-generation goods and services decreases. This is nearly two years of failure in securing and utilizing nascent technologies to prevent catastrophic COVID-surges, amid a top-down directive against foreign vaccines.
The ability to accurately forecast in China is done. The Black Swan among black swans has landed, and there are no longer guarantees of specific outcomes. 2022 saw Xi Jinping consolidate power into a blackhole, with the gravity of the times bringing extra pressure to a nation struggling to find a new path forward. Whether the government escapes the pull from their own failures isn't for current debate, as it is the action of the people that give the nation it's power, it's drive, it's ability to move forward. Whatever comes, may 2023 bring peace and health to the world, and to the Chinese people.
Selected References:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...articles/PMC7546956/
www.scmp.com/news/ch...mp-health-facilities
www.cnn.com/2022/12/...-intl-hnk/index.html
www.bloomberg.com/ne...million-people-a-day
Author's Note
Strain mutation will be extremely high given close-proximity of hosts across diverse immunological and pathological backgrounds; i.e. strains will mutate as they attempt to spread across people who have gotten various strains in the past with variable antibody levels and response. It is impossible to guess how various facets of COVID modulate, such as symptoms, but the virus has made significant modifications in RNA stability, replication levels, immune-stealth, evasion, etc. Many nations will and should institute travel bans to limit viral spread across large geographical distances, which will seriously afflict global markets.