The Edition: can China escape its zero Covid trap?
Best of the Spectator
The Spectator
4.4 • 785 Ratings
🗓️ 3 February 2022
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For this week’s cover story, Cindy Yu looks at Xi Jinping’s attempt to grapple with Covid. She joins the podcast, along with Ben Cowling, Chair Professor of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, The University of Hong Kong. (01:42)
Also this week: Whose in The Zac Pack? And what is their influence in No.10?James Heale, The Spectator’s diary editor has written in this week’s magazine about The Zac Pack. A group made up of Carrie Johnson, Lord Goldsmith and some highly influential figures in the Westminster corridors. James is joined by Christian Calgie, a senior reporter at Guido Fawkes to discuss the power this group have in No.10. And their role in Pen Farthing’s animal evacuation out of Afghanistan. (16:40)
And finally: A glance back 70 years ago, the Queen as a Princess. This weekend marks the 70th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II’s accession to the throne. Graham Viney, author of The Last Hurrah: South Africa and the Royal Tour of 1947, writes this week's magazine about how she was prepared for that moment. He joins the podcast, along with the royal commentator and biographer, Angela Levin, author of ‘Harry: A biography of a Prince’. (28:41)
Hosted by Lara Prendergast and William MooreProduced by Natasha Feroze
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This podcast is sponsored by Canacord Genuity Wealth Management, award-winning wealth managers who go above and beyond to support and guide you. |
| 0:09.2 | Visit can-dowealth.com to start building your wealth with confidence. |
| 0:18.0 | Hello and welcome to the edition podcast from The Spectator. |
| 0:21.6 | Every week we take a look at some of the most important and intriguing stories from the issue with the writers behind them. |
| 0:27.9 | I'm William Moore, the Spectator's features editor. |
| 0:30.9 | And I'm Laura Prendergars, the Spectator's executive editor. |
| 0:34.1 | This week is China stuck in a zero COVID trap. |
| 0:38.0 | Plus, who is in the Zach pack and what is their influence on number 10? |
| 0:42.7 | And finally, we glanced back 70 years ago when the Queen was still a princess. |
| 0:48.1 | First up, for this week's cover story, as the Winter Olympics kick-off in Beijing, |
| 0:53.3 | Cindy Yu looks at Xi Jinping's attempts to grapple with |
| 0:55.9 | COVID. She joins us now, along with Ben Cowling, chair professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health, |
| 1:03.0 | University of Hong Kong. Cindy, you write our cover story this week on China's zero-covid policy, |
| 1:09.1 | and you say that China seems to have got stuck in this zero |
| 1:11.6 | COVID trap. What's the current reality for people living in China right now? |
| 1:16.9 | So obviously it's a very big country. I mean, I think people often forget that it's actually |
| 1:20.7 | larger than Europe. So we're talking about a lot of different experiences at the moment. In some |
| 1:25.7 | of the strictest lockdown, which has recently eased, but my cousin |
| 1:29.7 | lives in Xi'an, which is a kind of central China city, it had the worst outbreak by Chinese |
| 1:36.1 | standards since Wuhan in 2020. And at that stage, people couldn't even leave their flats to go |
| 1:41.9 | shopping. So they literally had government rations being |
| 1:44.2 | delivered to the door, which obviously caused its own problems. Now, on the other side of the |
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