Premium: Xi’s Triumphalism causes China’s Covid disaster

As the FT's foreign affairs columnist Gideon Rachman writes, China's initially successful Covid lockdown approach has come back to haunt it.
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I received an email yesterday from the World Economic Forum ahead of the 2022 annual meeting which starts in under three weeks. Having had both Pfizer jabs plus been infected with the Delta variant of Covid, I thought a Booster was unnecessary. Not so. The WEF wants my vaccination certificate to include the Booster. So I'll be getting a third injection this week.

Which shows that although Covid may be less relevant for many of us here in SA, this is far from a universal view. Lots of vulnerable folk will be in Davos, so the WEF's approach makes sense. But at least the event is to be held two year break. Were the gathering hosted in China, that would be impossible.

As the FT's foreign affairs columnist Gideon Rachman writes below, China's initially successful Covid lockdown approach has come back to haunt it. The highly transmissable Omicron variant seems impervious to anything except isolation. With only a small percentage vaccinated, and its One Child Policy demographic weighted to older folk, Beijing has imposed economically ruinous lockdowns – now into their sixth week.

___STEADY_PAYWALL___

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