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Coronavirus Ushering in a Chinese Future 45

Is Coronavirus Ushering focused on short-term costs and much more on were both by the economic historian Adam
long-term plays than either of those rivals. Tooze: a sort of ticktock of the global financial
in a Chinese Future? panic in the Guardian, and a bigger-picture
Perhaps the clearest distillation of this thinking assessment in Foreign Policy, titled, bracingly,
came in a short essay by the Portugeuse politico “The Normal Economy Is Never Coming Back.”
Continued from Page 44
turned contrarian wise man Bruno Maçães, Tooze writes that as a result of the coronavirus
published April 3 at National Review: “China pandemic:
Wants to Use Coronavirus to Take Over the America’s economy is now widely
World.” (At Foreign Affairs, Yangzhong Huang expected to shrink by a quarter. That is as much
In Europe, the second-most-popular phone
was even more assertive, putting the proposition as during the Great Depression. But whereas the
company is the Chinese manufacturer Huawei, in the past tense: “Xi Jinping Won the contraction after 1929 stretched over a four-
suspected by many in U.S. intelligence to
Coronavirus Crisis”). As Maçães points out, year period, the coronavirus implosion will
contain backdoors designed for access by
though few in the West have noticed, the disease happen over the next three months. There has
Chinese intelligence, and now contracted to
has effectively ended the mass protests in Hong never been a crash landing like this before.
build out Britain’s 5G network. What once
Kong that were, for the better part of the last There is something new under the sun. And it is
sounded like xenophobic paranoia is now, at the year, the major domestic political threat to the horrifying.
very least, an acknowledgment of supply-chain
regime of Xi Jinping. “More important,” he
dependence and vulnerability (as the NBA
writes, “the pandemic set in motion a global
learned when it found itself in the middle of the
competition, to contain the virus, for which As recently as five weeks ago, at the beginning
Hong Kong protests, with no executives or
China and the Chinese Communist Party seem of March, U.S. unemployment was at record
players willing to speak out, for fear of uniquely prepared.” lows. By the end of March, it had surged to
jeopardizing business interests in the country).
somewhere around 13 percent. That is the
At the most basic level, this is because no one, at highest number recorded since World War II. We
And the WHO, the global organization you’d
this point, is looking to the United States, indeed don’t know the precise figure because our system
hope, in a pandemic, would be able to help the
to any nation in the West, as a model for how to of unemployment registration was not built to
world as a whole sort through these issues — respond to COVID-19, or any pandemic. Which track an increase at this speed. On successive
highlighting the good studies, casting doubt on
means they may look less reliably to those Thursdays, the number of those making initial
bad data, separating reliable manufacturers of
countries as models in any crisis. China isn’t the filings for unemployment insurance has surged
test kits and PPE from unreliable ones — has
world leader on COVID response, of course; first to 3.3 million, then 6.6 million, and now by
such an uncomfortably deferential relationship
South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan have another 6.6 million. At the current rate, as the
to China that one of its senior officials, when managed much better, and without the black economist Justin Wolfers pointed out in the New
asked by a journalist about the exemplary
mark of initial failure. But among the world’s York Times, U.S. unemployment is rising at
response in Taiwan, first pretended not to hear
real great powers, even accounting for nearly 0.5 percent per day. It is no longer
the question, and then, when it was repeated,
inaccurate data, China has managed its way unimaginable that the overall unemployment
simply hung up the phone, rather than even
through the crisis much faster and more rate could reach 30 percent by the summer.
acknowledge Taiwan’s existence (let alone its confidently than the U.S. or any nation of
lessons for the rest of the world). He has since
Europe. “The numbers of cases and fatalities The ultimate fallout, Tooze writes, “defies
apologized, but, as my colleague Andrew
provided by Chinese authorities almost certainly calculation.” But the impact may be even more
Sullivan wrote last week, the WHO’s
misrepresent the real figures by more than an punishing in the developing world, he suggests.
problematic record here is longer than a single
order of magnitude,” Maçães acknowledges in “This year, for the first time since reasonably
bad interview: Beyond all the early his piece. “But the fact remains that a semblance reliable records of GDP began to be computed
misinformation, as recently as last week it was
of normalcy was achieved in a small period of after World War II, the emerging market
downplaying the severity of the disease by
time. If the United States fails to do the same, its economies will contract,” he writes. “An entire
suggesting again, and against the public-health
prestige will suffer a severe blow. People all model of global economic development has
consensus, that mask-wearing was unnecessary
over the world will quickly change their been brought skidding to a halt.”
by all but the sick. This while public officials in perceptions about relative power and capacity.”
China are “cracking down” on those academics
But if most of the world is presently skidding
trying to study the origin of the disease, vetting
Indeed, Maçães told me when we spoke last into a depression in order to avoid public-health
and deleting academic work and imposing new
week by phone, the U.S. has already suffered catastrophe, in China, Maçães points out, the
restrictions on research on the subject. The same
profoundly from living in a bubble of delusion country is already recovering — almost
week, the scientific journal Nature apologized about China. One relative advantage the South certainly more haltingly than it says, and yet in
for “erroneously … associating the virus with
Koreas and Singapores of the world may have ways you can more or less track, and more or
Wuhan and with China,” and describing its own
had over the U.S., he said, is considerably more less verify. “The most recent data show renewed
decision to do so as “an error on our part, for
sophistication about China, which helped in activity in the flow of goods across the country,
which we take responsibility and apologise.”
interpreting the news out of Wuhan. In the U.S., as well as at ports worldwide that do business
Already, there is a long list of researchers with out of a mix of ignorance and prejudice, with China,” he writes. “If the freeze in Europe
an interest in, or some insight into, the origin of
snobbery and disinterest, Americans were likely and America continues for much longer, Chinese
the disease who have simply disappeared.
to see both a devastating epidemic outbreak like companies will be able to dramatically expand
COVID-19 and the remarkable, rapid market share and replace Western-led value
But these “COVID hawks” aren’t just fretting
lockdowns that followed as “normal” for China, chains.”
over the way China handled the arrival of and therefore to assume nothing extraordinary
COVID-19, they are beginning to warn about
had to be done within their own nation to defend (Continued on Page 50)
how the country will handle the next stages of
against the disease. Those nations who knew
the global crisis, too — positioning itself, as the
China better, he said, were much quicker to read THANK YOU
U.S. did with the Marshall Plan after World War
the news out of Wuhan — both reports of the
II, as the major, indeed essential, global creditor disease itself and the unprecedented shutdown TO ALL
and investor helping a cratered world economy FIRST RESPONDERS
— as signs of genuine, near-existential alarm.
begin to recover. In this view, though China
As a result, they prepared accordingly. AND
bungled COVID-19 at first and probably
ESSENTIAL WORKERS
handicapped the rest of the world’s response as
At the moment, the U.S. and the rest of the West FOR ALL YOU DO
well, neither of those failures will prove costly, is just beginning to feel the economic pain
in the long term, if China can plausibly offer DURING THE
brought on by our shutdowns. Somewhat
itself as a stronger and more willing partner to COVID-19 PANDEMIC
amazingly, two of the best pieces surveying that
the struggling nations of the world than the U.S.
landscape published over the last few weeks OF 2020
or Europe, which it will inevitably try to — less