2 But the country remains under heavy curbs, even as the world walks free thanks to vaccines
Protests against the strict lockdown have now spilled into the third day, and are quickly spreading across the country. According to numbers crunched by Nomura Holdings, at least 49 cities have various levels of lockdown in place, impacting around 412 million people and activities that account for almost a quarter of the country’s GDP.
To understand this, one needs to reflect on the prolonged duration of Covid lockdowns that the Chinese people have experienced — especially in comparison to how the rest of the world has experienced them. Nearly three years into the pandemic, China has stuck with enforcing mobility curbs that other countries dropped months (if not years) ago. A look data from the Oxford Covid-19 Government Response Tracker, which records the strictness of government policies based on nine indicators including schools, offices, travel bans, highlights the prolonged nature of Chinese curbs. This shows that China currently has curbs of 62.5 on a scale of 0 to 100 (100 being the strictest). The rest of the world had similarly strict curbs more than a year and a half ago in March 2021 — at a time when the Delta wave was ravaging most nations.