Business | The value of zero

What next for China’s covid-industrial complex?

Relaxation of the rules is a threat to pandemic profits

SHENYANG, CHINA - MARCH 29, 2022 - A view of Fangcang hospital in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, China, March 29, 2022. After 9 days of construction day and night, shenyang Fangcang hospital emergency renovation phase I project successfully completed, formally ready for delivery conditions. (Photo credit should read Costfoto/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
|HONG KONG

The harsher China’s zero-covid regime, the bigger its covid-industrial complex. The zero-covid mantra was to test as many people as possible and then to quarantine not only the infected but their contacts and even the contacts of those contacts. In many cases the occupants of entire residential buildings were carted away to isolation wards—called fangcang yiyuan in Chinese—after the discovery of a single case in an area. As leaders in Beijing fought to keep the virus from spreading across the country, many firms cashed in.

This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “The value of zero”

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