China’s Let-It-Rip Covid Reopening – WSJ

Early in the pandemic, China appeared to contain the virus. It distributed masks and tests domestically and world-wide and developed a vaccine it shared with other countries. These achievements allowed Beijing to portray itself as a global public-health leader, especially compared with the bumbling early response by many Western countries.

But global health is a long game, and China has fallen far behind by making three crucial mistakes.

First, the zero-Covid strategy. China used ubiquitous electronic tracking systems, mandatory testing and severe lockdowns of neighborhoods, cities and even entire regions whenever a Covid case was detected. If these extreme measures limited Covid deaths in China, they came at a huge cost. Economic growth, which averaged nearly 8% in the decade before the pandemic, is projected to be only about 3% for 2022. Youth unemployment is above 20%. The wealthy are trying to flee, and foreign companies are searching for alternative manufacturing centers because of China’s unreliability. The lockdowns have sown deep and unprecedented public hostility toward the government.

Second, China’s vaccine fiasco. China adopted a conservative approach, pursuing traditional inactivated-virus vaccines rather than novel ones like the

Pfizer

and

Moderna

mRNA shots. Early on, Chinese scientists ridiculed the American mRNA effort. China made its homegrown vaccines available to nearly 70 countries to bolster its image as a global-health leader. But even Chinese officials quickly acknowledged that these vaccines offered significantly less protection than the mRNA shots.

Yet Mr. Xi has repeatedly refused to procure Pfizer or Moderna vaccines despite multiple offers. (Moderna refused China’s demand that it hand over its intellectual property as a precondition for purchase.) Instead,…