Western societies have failed the deadly Covid test. They must learn lessons from Asia
Is Covid-19 the virus that killed not just millions of people but also the supremacy of western economies, liberal values and convictions that democracy is the best form of government? As France and Belgium lead Europe back into national lockdowns and Britain is set to follow, no European country, whatever their record until now, is free from a surge in infections. The coronavirus experience in the United States will almost certainly cost Donald Trump the presidency. However, autocracies and communitarian societies in Asia are faring much better; China and a host of Asian countries are managing to contain the virus andgrow their economies. Taiwan has not seen a locally transmitted case for more than six months.
None of this was lost on the top members of the Chinese Communist party who met last week to decide on their plans, not only for the next five years but the next 15. They agreed that China’s party-led collective development is at the heart of all its achievements and that this will now be even more vigorously promoted in its diplomacy, a coded reference to the beltand-road initiative. This astonishing Chinese version of the postwar Marshall Plan, only many times larger, invites signatories in some 100 countries, in exchange for billions in aid to build up infrastructure, to accept and emulate China’s collective approach to economic and social development. There is to be no let-up.
Even human rights should be seen as the right, collectively, to share in economic and social advance, emphatically not as individual freedoms to vote and to act and think independently of state direction. It is because China adheres to these principles that it has managed to contain Covid-19 more effectively than the west, using its Orwellian national surveillance system to insist on social distancing, quarantining and curfews. Equally, its Leninist capitalism has provided 60m new jobs over the past five years, continuing into 2020 despite Covid. In the future, declared the party communique, innovation is to occupy the “core position” in China’s drive for “quality” growth and the aim, by 2025, is to have achieved “self-reliance in science and technology”. The already stunning sums spent on future technologies are to be raised again.
Meanwhile, western societies and economies reel as the extreme right provokes violent street protests against tightening restrictions. There are armed militias in the US, mafia-inspired protests in Italy and hard-right rioting in Spain. Democratic government is failing, weak and should have prepared for a second wave: better to have a libertarian free-for-all, with everyone taking their chance, than more ineffective restrictions goes the rightwing rallying cry.
Global stock markets have had their worst week since March as it becomes obvious that, whatever the economic resilience in Asia, it is not shared in the US and Europe, which are descending into prolonged recession. Is our choice to follow China or descend into a dystopian world fit for Mad Max?
There is another option – a 21stcentury recreation of the spirit of the New Deal, the Attlee government and Jean Monnet and the founders of the EU. At times like these, progressive leaders have the chance in democracies to wrest the dominant argument from the right, win elections and use the mandate to launch powerful economic and social programmes that work. The postwar settlement that our predecessors devised - national and international and with fairness at its heart - created 30 years of prosperity and embedded the legitimacy of democracy; its subsequent unwinding by the Anglo-Saxon right and indifference to the growth of inequality have led to today’s debacle. The Donald Trumps and Boris Johnsons, along with the philosophy they represent, need to be dispatched.
All the signs are that on Tuesday the US electorate is poised to do just that. My expectation is that Joe Biden is going to win an extraordinary mandate for his brand of competent, progressive centrism to build a fairer, more equal America. Incompetence, wild policy oscillations, genuflections to libertarianism, extravagant over-claiming and, above all, the indulgence of inequality are out. The challenge will be to make his administration work; simultaneously, Biden must beat the virus, lay the foundations of a more inclusive capitalism, launch his “green New Deal”, reinvigorate international institutions and visibly promote equality. There will be a vaccine in the next 12 months that will help him, but containing the virus means, above all, having a system of income support that allows the disadvantaged, when stricken, to take themselves out of economic and social circulation.
The big lesson from Asia is that communitarian, more equal societies have the social capital and mutual support to allow curfews, self-isolation, quarantining and social distancing to work, even for the poorest. It can also be done in the west but with different tools, of which generous sick pay, income support and furlough arrangements are central. The better-off must be seen to be taking their share of the pain. It is why, in the end, everyone has to knuckle down in the event of another national lockdown.
There will be a parallel move in Britain. Biden’s victory will underline that the Johnson government is an idiosyncratic outlier. Its reflexes – a hard Brexit, tiering the intensity of Covid responses, stinginess on social support, distrust of the state, an inability to make any future vision of the economy and society seem real and, above all, an unwillingness to talk fairness and equality – are out of time. If we are to get through another gruelling national lockdown, Britain needs to start being a fairer place. There needs to be a feasible plan to build institutions and companies that will create the inclusive stakeholder economy. And we have to work with Europe.
China’s oppression and corruption – the dark sides of its success – will ultimately overwhelm it. We can win through and stand by our values but only with a very different kind of government.
• Will Hutton is an Observer columnist
Democratic government in the west is failing, weak and should have prepared for a second wave