Chinese Whispers: has China really beaten Covid?

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4.4 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 23 November 2020

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As the UK and much of the West continues to struggle against Covid, in China, things largely seem back to normal. Pictures from the 'Golden Week', a week of state holidays to celebrate the People's Republic's founding, showed mountains and seas of people. On this longer episode than usual, Cindy Yu takes a deep dive into China's Covid response - finding out about life in China right now, China's 'Zero Covid' strategy and the economic ramifications.

Chinese Whispers is a fortnightly podcast on the latest in Chinese politics, society, and more. Presented by Cindy Yu. Listen to past episodes here.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Spectator magazine combines incisive political analysis with books and arts reviews of unrivaled authority. Absolutely free. Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher.
0:31.8	Hello and welcome to Chinese Whispers with me, Cindy Yu.
0:35.2	Every episode, I'll be talking to journalists, experts and long-time China watchers about the latest in Chinese politics, society and more.
0:42.3	There'll be a smattering of history to catch you up on the background knowledge and some context as well.
0:47.3	How did the Chinese see these issues?
0:50.3	In August, pictures and videos of a thousand strong Wuhan-Poor party went viral.
0:56.0	I wrote about it at the time for the spectator, and I explored China's return to normality and how it got there, just so much quicker than others.
1:04.1	Three months on, the UK and much of the West is still battling with COVID, while it's no longer the top concern for most Chinese.
1:11.6	In this longer episode than usual, I take a deep dive into China and COVID, finding out exactly what life
1:16.8	is like there now, how it got to this stage, and the economic cost that it has incurred.
1:21.6	My guests today are from all over the world. Emily Fong is NPR's Beijing correspondent.
1:26.8	Professor Yan Zhou Huan is a public health expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
1:32.4	And the economist George Magnus, author of Red Flag's Why Seas China is in Jeopardy, joins me from Oxford.
1:39.1	I spoke to them over the course of the last fortnight. First, I spoke to Emily Fong. I asked her what life is like
1:45.5	there right now. I hate to say this and I don't want to rub this in, but it's basically back to normal.
1:51.8	Of course, we're living in this giant China-sized bubble. Foreigners can't get into China. It is now
1:58.5	difficult to find flights to leave. But within China itself, things have
2:03.6	picked back up where they were before the epidemic. I mean, businesses are open again,
2:07.6	restaurants are full, people go clubbing. I went to a rave a few weeks ago. Yes. I went to a
2:13.6	techno club a few days ago. People are holding conferences again.
2:18.0	Domestic airlines are full.
2:20.2	So it's not that COVID is completely gone.
	...

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