China’s “Zero COVID” policy - what’s in it for the CCP?

[Sperghetti]

Personally I think thanks to their "face" culture the Chinese, especially their leadership have an inability to admit they've fucked up or that they were wrong in any way and so they double and triple down on stupid.

Oh I'd agree. Personally, I believe this has all sparked from Chinese "face" culture and the west not understanding it.

Right from the beginning, people were operating under the assumption that the Chinese government bulldozing roads so people couldn't leave town and literally welding them into their apartments must mean that this coronavirus thing was really super deadly, because why else would they do that?

Well, yeah, for normal people that seems like an overreaction for anything less than the t-Virus, but the CCP is an authoritarian government with an almost pathological obsession with appearances, and they were right in the middle of catching major flak over the protests in Hong Kong and their influence over western media. Just because you wouldn't use a sledgehammer to kill a fly doesn't mean somebody else wouldn't.

 

[Manul Otocolobus]

I have read what I can about COVID in China and I still can not get my head around it with the immense lockdowns despite the vaccinations...

I can help with this aspect of it. The chink vaccine? Complete shit. It barely worked against the earlier strains, and not for very long. It is utterly worthless against Omicron and even more so against its subvariants. The Chinese essentially have no effective vaccine and no effective treatments against Omicron. I guarantee the higher-ups know this as well as I do, and they are probably shitting their pants that the average bugman will find out the government has the equivalent of a placebo to prevent and treat COVID now. The higher-ups also know they don't have the resources to treat the number of people that would need even basic supportive treatment with this weaker variant. If they don't contain it, it will essentially spread faster than wildfire and bring the entire country to its knees in a matter of weeks if they completely lose containment, and a matter of months if their containment measures are somewhat effective.

 

[MadStan]

I can help with this aspect of it. The chink vaccine? Complete shit. It barely worked against the earlier strains, and not for very long. It is utterly worthless against Omicron and even more so against its subvariants. The Chinese essentially have no effective vaccine and no effective treatments against Omicron. I guarantee the higher-ups know this as well as I do, and they are probably shitting their pants that the average bugman will find out the government has the equivalent of a placebo to prevent and treat COVID now. The higher-ups also know they don't have the resources to treat the number of people that would need even basic supportive treatment with this weaker variant. If they don't contain it, it will essentially spread faster than wildfire and bring the entire country to its knees in a matter of weeks if they completely lose containment, and a matter of months if their containment measures are somewhat effective.

Your answer is the best answer. I looked up Sinovac and sure enough there is enough out there to support your thesis more than strongly.

Can you imagine that to wage war on the Chinese Economy, one only need send letters with Covid infected saliva on envelopes? Once could literally send random letters to thousands in the regions and they'd end up locking down the whole country.

Unfortunately for the global Economy it means China has locked itself into a spiral - there is nothing to celebrate with this as it is going to drag everyone down if it goes on for 2-3 more months.