China is weak compared to the West, expert notes
China’s zero-Covid strategy puts the world’s most populous country in a vulnerable position in the face of the virus, a Chinese expert estimates, in an article that contradicts Beijing’s official line.
Over two years, the communist state’s official report reported just over 100,000 cases of infection, including 4,636 deaths. But the absence of circulation of the virus also means that the Chinese are less immune, notes one of the country’s leading experts, in an article published Monday on the social network Weibo.
Zeng Guang, a former chief expert at the National Center for Disease Control and Prevention, notes that “the natural infection rate of the Chinese people is a hundred or a thousand times lower than that of Western countries, and the immune barrier depends entirely on vaccines.” .
The zero-Covid strategy cannot remain in place forever and “humanity’s long-term goal is to coexist with the virus”, with acceptable rates of morbidity and mortality, pleads the expert, for whom Westerners are showing “remarkable courage” in learning to live with Covid-19.
Last summer, another expert, Zhang Wenhong, defended similar positions before being called a “traitor” on social networks. Since then, he has been the subject of a university investigation for plagiarism.
