Li Yuan writes:

Long before the “zero Covid” policy, China had a “zero sparrow” policy.

In the spring of 1958, the Chinese government mobilized the entire nation to exterminate sparrows, which Mao declared pests that destroyed crops. All over China, people banged on pots and pans, lit firecrackers and waved flags to prevent the birds from landing so they would fall and die from exhaustion. By one estimation, nearly two billion sparrows were killed nationwide within months.

The near extinction of sparrows led to insect infestations, which ruined crops and contributed to the Great Famine, which starved tens of millions of Chinese to death in the next three years.

The fear in China now is that the “zero Covid” policy has become another Mao-style political campaign that is based on the will of one person, the country’s top leader, Xi Jinping — and that it could end up hurting everyone.

Just as Mao and his lieutenants ignored the opposition to their anti-sparrow policy from scientists and technocrats, Beijing has ignored experts’ advice that China abandon its costly strategy and learn to coexist with the coronavirus, especially a milder, if more infectious, variant.

Instead, Beijing insists on following the same playbook from 2020 that relies on mass testing, quarantine and lockdowns. The approach has put hundreds of millions of lives on pause, sent tens of thousands to makeshift quarantine camps and deprived many non-Covid patients of medical treatments.

“They’re not countering the pandemic. They’re creating disasters,” Ye Qing, a law scholar who is known by his pen name, Xiao Han, wrote in an online article that was swiftly deleted. [Continue reading…]