CGTN独家纪录片：武汉战疫纪 | How does China take on a virus?

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Introduction

1月23日上午10时，为了阻止新冠病毒在全国范围内进一步蔓延，武汉进入封锁状态。这是除夕夜的前一天，而除夕是人们计划回家的重要节日。这部纪录片谨献给所有一直与COVID-19作斗争以遏制这种流行病的人们。

At 10 a.m. on January 23, Wuhan went into lockdown. This was done to stop a deadly virus from spreading further across the nation. It was one day before Chinese New Year's Eve, a major travel day for people planning to return home for the holidays. This documentary is dedicated to all those who've been battling tirelessly against the COVID-19 virus in order to keep the epidemic at bay.

中国是如何应对新冠病毒的？

How does China take on a virus?

It has been a month since Wuhan was locked down because of the novel coronavirus outbreak. Like a big push on a swing, the epidemic tips the balance in the world, and China is making efforts to keep standing.

The challenge lies in the country's size. China is a big country with a large span, and the virus hit the center, literally. The epicenter is a metropolis of 16 million people in the middle of the country. To make matters worse, it is surrounded by many cities, also with millions of inhabitants. Wuhan is a transport hub, and the virus is threatening to infect the whole surrounding area. The size of the country is a significant obstacle.

But that's only half the story. Because of its continental size, all the parts feed off each other. When Wuhan fell, the other provinces came to its aid. As we speak, one-tenth of the intensive care doctors of the entire country is in Wuhan. A total of 40,000 medical staff moved to the center in a wartime fashion. China plans to take the virus full on.

Structure matters. Another weight on scale is messaging. China has two-way traffic of communication: top-down and bottom-up. 

China needs to do better bottom-up. When doctors in Wuhan sounded alarms of the new virus, the message got lost. An investigation is still ongoing on why. But one reason is obvious: there are too many layers, too much red tape, and too little incentives to send the messages up. 

But China is strong when it comes to top-down messages. When the leadership is on top of the problem, it has the willpower, and wherewithal to make the call. And the grassroots answer. China launched a people's war. That was exactly what was needed to deal with a traveling threat like an epidemic. China built two hospitals in 10 days, thousands of wards in a week, and shook the population into action. Top-down is fast and sharp. Nobody should argue against such an efficiency, especially when what's at stake is a plague spreading.

But keeping the balance is hard. Every decision is a trade-off when it affects the lives of thousands and the livelihood of millions. 

We need to slow the spread. Draconian quarantines are being enforced in many parts of the country. Maintain a large network of isolation and a low rate of rogue behavior is the answer; the question is that we still don't know the exact extent of the infection. Isolating the infected while not infringing on people's rights and decency is not an easy task.

Our economy relies on human transaction, but epidemic control depends on social distancing. We need to keep a distance, and yet we need to work together. So how do we balance saving lives and saving economy? This is an issue that requires hard decision-making.

But the hardest is when to draw the line, with so little information on an adversary like the virus and so few weapons at our disposal, without treatment or vaccines, we are not able to answer the public's question: when does it end?

Before the end of the Second World War, Winston Churchill described the war like this: Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be, for without victory, there is no survival.

Now, we are at war with a virus. And victory is still ahead of us.

Luckily, we still have a big country to fall back on, a world that lifts us, and a system that delivers results. There will be more hard decisions to be made. In the end, we hope those will be the best choices, and we should be proud of them.

《经济学人》相关报道

新冠肺炎疫情爆发，致使中国经济增长受挫，世界投资者们通过考察同为冠状病毒引起的“非典”疫情，认为此次疫情平息后，经济同样会强势反弹。但相比17年前，当前中国经济不仅体量大增，而且已更深入地卷入到全球供应链体系之中，中国经济“停摆”产生的影响或许更加深远。

How China’s epidemic could hurt the world economy

WHEN SHOCKS hit the global economy, Wall Street looks to history to see what will happen next. The outbreak in China of covid-19, a respiratory disease, invites a comparison to the last one, SARS. In that outbreak in 2003 China suffered a sharp hit to its growth, followed by a strong rebound. Although covid-19 has now claimed more lives than SARS, investors remain optimistic that its economic effects will follow a similar path.

On February 13th Hubei province, centre of the outbreak, announced 14,840 new confirmed cases, a sharp rise. That was because it suddenly started including CT-scan diagnoses, not just specific tests for the virus. Although the statistical fog is thick, indicators such as the fall in new cases outside Hubei and the total of suspected cases suggest that the rate of fresh infections may be trending lower.

Most economists have thus only nudged down their forecasts for full-year global growth. Chinese stocks and commodities, which track economic prospects, have clawed back ground after initial falls. Global stockmarkets are higher than they were in January, when the severity of the outbreak became clear. We hope their optimism is justified. Yet the comparison makes two assumptions: in supposing that containing the virus maps neatly onto a better economic outlook; and in thinking that the world still works as it did when SARS was a threat.

There is an inherent tension between China’s apparent success in containing the epidemic and its growth prospects. Though less lethal, covid-19 seems more infectious than SARS. China has slowed its advance only by severely limiting people’s movement and closing businesses. If the government were to relax these controls too hastily, progress could stall or even go into reverse. So far, officials have erred on the side of caution. Provinces accounting for more than 90% of Chinese exports have kept factories either shut or running at low capacity since January 31st, when the lunar new-year holiday was due to end.

It is hard to overstate the effect on the economy. Coal consumption is more than a third lower than the average for this time of year. Property sales are down by more than 90%. After the holiday some 200m people usually leave their home towns to return to work. This year the trains that carry migrants have been nearly empty. Cities have warned outsiders that they might face 14-day quarantines. Nine out of ten companies surveyed by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai have employees working from home. Couriers still zoom around on their electric motorbikes, but the takeaway trade is not saving restaurants because people fear eating meals prepared by strangers who may be infected. Grabbing a latte is a risk too far. Starbucks has shut half its 4,000-plus cafés in China.

The second doubt is over the relevance of SARS as a comparison. The global economy has changed since 2003, when SARS struck. China now accounts for 16% of global GDP, up from 4% back then. And it is the world’s second-biggest importer, so any weakness, however temporary, is felt far and wide. Already, some of its firms are trying to get out of contractual commitments to import copper and liquefied natural gas. And its tourists, who spend $250bn a year on overseas travel, are staying at home.

Accounting for China’s increased size is easy. But the economy has not just grown since 2000; its manufacturers have also become enmeshed in supply chains of mind-boggling complexity. A factory in Wuhan may provide parts to a firm elsewhere in China, which in turn supplies a factory in Stuttgart, with the final product emerging in Michigan. Just-in-time production leaves little room for delays. Many firms cannot trace all their suppliers, making it hard to predict the impact of work stoppages in China on their output, let alone on global GDP. History provides little guidance on the effects of disrupted supply chains, because the world economy has not been organised around them for long.

Some problems have already emerged. Hyundai has halted some car production in South Korea because parts are short. So has Nissan in Japan. Facebook has stopped taking orders for its new virtual-reality headset and Nintendo has delayed shipments of new gaming devices. Foxconn, which makes smartphones for Apple and Huawei, has restarted its factories but with skeletal staffing. And these are just the brands you have heard of. China churns out a third of the world’s chemicals, half of its LCD screens and two-thirds of its polyester. Companies that think they are isolated from China could be in for a surprise.

It is also possible that the virus spreads rapidly outside China. Infections in developing countries may be going undetected. Vietnam has quarantined 10,000 people, but most governments could not enact the measures that China is using to slow the disease, so covid-19 could yet become a pandemic. Wall Street’s optimism, in other words, is premature. If economists have a bias, it is to focus on things that are measurable and quantifiable. Alas, the covid-19 outbreak brings many risks that are not. 

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Feb 13th 2020 | Leaders | 840 words

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