Zero covid

Confusion is infecting Shanghai. The authorities are dithering over a promised easing of severe lockdown rules in the face of record cases of Covid-19 and widespread anger over their cack-handed way they have handled the crisis. The city has become a test for China’s faltering zero-Covid strategy, with nervous Communist party leaders sending mixed signals – announcing a change in the rules, while insisting they will stick to what they now characterise as a ‘dynamic’ zero-Covid policy ‘without hesitation or wavering’. At the weekend, vice-mayor Zong Ming announced a reclassification of Shanghai’s districts according to the severity of the outbreak. But the plan is short on detail and residents of

With just three weeks until the opening of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, Covid-19 is creeping ever closer to the capital. The Communist party is seeking to isolate Beijing from the rest of the country to keep the virus at bay and the games on track. But its zero-Covid policy, a desperate game of Whac-A-Mole with the virus, is looking increasingly unsustainable. All routes between Beijing and Tianjin have been closed after an outbreak in the port city, which is adjacent to the capital. Flights and high-speed train services in and out of a city of 14 million people have been cancelled and highways closed after the discovery of 126

New Zealand has done remarkably well over the past 18 months at protecting its citizens from the worst of the Covid pandemic – better than almost any other country in the world. Only 26 people have died of Covid in the country, after it has aggressively locked down at the first sign of a case and closed off its borders to the rest of the world. But as we have recently learned in Afghanistan, an exit strategy can easily undermine all your previous achievements. New Zealand is now in a very difficult situation. It is currently facing its first outbreak of the Delta variant, but only a small proportion of

Mao Zedong once said that the game of mahjong should not be underestimated, because: ‘If you know how to play it, you’ll have a better understanding of the relationship between chance and necessity. There’s philosophy in mahjong. It’s also dialectical… even if you have the worst hand, as long as you are strategic and methodical, the inferior will become superior; weakness will become strength.’ He even claimed the tile-based game was one of China’s three ‘great contributions’ to the world. Ironically, mahjong was outlawed under his rule. The early communists viewed it as an unnecessary distraction for the masses, and disliked its links to gambling and capitalism. It was not