I've read Ehret's analysis: Putting the Shanghai Lockdown into Context: China Sees this as a BioweaponThere seems to me to be a holdover of this tendency in post-Mao China. I don't think it's the ONLY explanation for this zero-COVID policy, but it's significant. You have the impossible goal, and the endless energy to carry it out, even if it approaches levels of absurdity. There's also an element of the myth of technocracy rooted in utilitarian (i.e. schizoid) philosophy and ethics. I wouldn't be surprised if leaving people alone during a plague would be vastly more effective than all centralized "public health" policies that "experts" devise in an emergency. Even better might be to provide some basic education rooted in fact. But to try to "control" an entire population is the height of hubris. As seen in Shanghai, okay you want to lock everyone in their apartments. Do you have the infrastructure to provide them all with food? Seems like something to think about BEFORE implementing such a self-destructive policy.
Great historical and geopolitical context as always, but he speculates that this virus is particularly bad to Han Chinese without providing evidence. He takes our explanation for why the Chinese govt INITIALLY 'went full DefCon with activating bio-attack defense protocols', but that does not explain why such measures are now RETURNING 2.5 years later. The virus is endemic now. It's practically incorporated into the human genome. Why should that be any less the case in China?
Or am I wrong about that? Are there still hundreds of millions of Chinese who have not been exposed to the virus (of whatever variant)? Is the virus still doing some form of damage that suppresses or negatively alters the population in some way?
If the Chinese govt is being utilitarian, what is the trade-off for doing this??