China’s Zero-COVID Policy and Its Implications for Indonesia’s Post-Pandemic Economic Recovery
While the rest of the world largely returned to everyday life in 2021, this is not the case in China. While the country was celebrated as one of the “successful” countries in combating the COVID-19 pandemic, many of its cities remain in lockdown two years into the pandemic. While there is growing discontent with this policy, the Chinese government has insisted that the zero-COVID policy is the best policy to handle the pandemic in China. The appointment of Li Qiang, the Party Secretary of Shanghai during the brutal COVID-19 lockdown in early 2022 that harmed the economy, in the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party as the next premier of China has proven that Xi Jinping has doubled down on China’s continued application of the zero-COVID policy (BBC News 2022).
