Hello, you're very welcome to Longreads, a Jacquin podcast where we look in depth at political

topics and thinkers. My name is Daniel Finn, and the features editor here at Jacquin,

and I'll be presenting the show. China was the first country to have born the brunt

of COVID-19 at the start of 2020. Western news reports from Lake January of that year

describe the scenes in Wuhan with a sense of disbelief.

Drastic measures to halt the spread of that deadly virus. Wuhan China ground zero for

the outbreak now under lockdown. Most of the 17 dead and more than 500 sick and are

in Wuhan, where today we saw the first images from the front lines. Patients in isolation

units being treated by doctors in biohazard suits. Pharmacy is struggling to keep masks

on the shelves. The city of 11 million now halting all public transportation and outbound

flights. Those emergency measures would soon become familiar throughout the world. Meanwhile,

the Chinese government appears to have done a better job of containing the pandemic than

the authorities in the US. Even the recent Delta outbreak hasn't proved to be as damaging

for China as for many other countries. The experience of the pandemic is fed into perceptions

that China will dominate this century in the way that America dominated the last one.

Joe Biden has made it a priority to head off that danger before it becomes a reality.

Our guest today for a conversation about China's political economy after Covid-19 is

Ho Fung Hong. He's a professor in the Sociology Department at Johns Hopkins University,

and the author of The China Boom, Why China Will Not Rule the World.

What was the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the Chinese economy in 2020 and how far

has it managed to recover since then?

For the immediate economic impact, of course, it is great. It is dire, and as in many other

...