China falls on Nikkei COVID-19 Recovery Index
The latest pandemic wave has pushed the country from 2nd to 32nd place, blamed on Xi Jinping's zero-COVID policy. Experts call for a more effective vaccination campaign. Cambodia, Taiwan, Nepal and Mongolia rank in the top 10, performing better than Beijing.
Beijing (AsiaNews) – China dropped 30 places on the Nikkei COVID-19 Recovery Index to 32nd due to a steady rise in the number of cases, this despite the lockdown imposed on Shanghai, the country’s largest city, and Jilin province.
This is the first time that China is not in the top 10 since Nikkei launched its index in July 2021.
A few months after the outbreak of the pandemic in late 2019 and early 2020, Xi Jinping announced with great pomp that China had beaten the coronavirus, a source of pride for the regime and geopolitical and ideological capital to be used in the confrontation with the United States.
However, the zero-COVID policy pursued by Chinese authorities did not prevent new infections.
A year after Xi's announcement that the government had eliminated extreme poverty in the country, analysts suggest that the new pandemic wave could plunge part of the population back into poverty.
The authorities intervened with subsidies to stimulate economic activities, but for now they had to put aside the “common prosperity”, a redistributive policy recently launched by the Chinese president.
The Nikkei index assesses countries and regions on the basis of three criteria: infection management, vaccine rollouts and social mobility.
In March, China lost 11 points in the first criterion because of the increase in cases. Yesterday, more than 21,000 cases were reported in Shanghai, about 87 per cent of the nationwide total, although most of the cases are asymptomatic.
Takashi Kasai, the World Health Organisation Western Pacific regional director, notes that given China’s huge population, even a low proportion of infections could overwhelm the country’s health system.
In this regard, experts note that the situation might get out of control because only half of Chinese over 80 are fully vaccinated, a percentage that rises to more than 90 per cent in Japan and Singapore.
In the Asia-Pacific region, only Thailand lost ground like China, dropping 28 places to 113th on the index.
Conversely, some other countries in the region have performed well. Cambodia rose to 2nd place on the Nikkei index, followed by Taiwan in 4th, Nepal in 6th, and Mongolia in 7th.
The United Arab Emirates is in the lead, while Italy is 56th.
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