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Duncan Clark’s flight was rolling on the runway in Paris in late October when President Emmanuel Macron announced a second national lockdown in France. The country recorded nearly 50,000 new Covid-19 infections that day. The United States had nearly 100,000.
He sighed in relief. He was heading for China. As of that day, he had reported 25 new infections, all but one from overseas.
Mr. Clark, a businessman and author, returned to China after spending nine months in the United States and France, his longest stay away from the country since moving to Beijing in 1994. He had spent more time outside of China in the past. a few years to escape air pollution, the censored internet and an increasingly depressing political environment.
But when he returned in October, he felt something new: safe, energetic and free.
“The ability to live a normal life is pretty amazing,” he said.
While many countries are still reeling from Covid-19, China – where the pandemic originated from – has become one of the safest places in the world. The country has reported fewer than 100,000 infections for all of 2020. The United States has been reporting more every day since early November.
China looks like “normal” in the pre-pandemic world. The restaurants are crowded. The hotels are full. Long queues form outside luxury brand stores. Instead of Zoom calls, people meet face to face to talk business or celebrate the New Year.
The country will be the only major economy to see growth this year. While these predictions are often more artistic than scientific, one team predicts that the Chinese economy will overtake that of the United States by 2028 – five years earlier than expected.
The pandemic has upset many perceptions, including ideas about freedom. Chinese citizens do not have freedom of speech, freedom of worship, or the absence of fear – three of the four freedoms set forth by President Franklin D. Roosevelt – but they do have the freedom to move and lead a life normal daily. . In a year of a pandemic, many people around the world would envy this most basic form of freedom.
The global crisis could cast doubt on other types of freedom. Nearly half of voting Americans backed a president who ignored science and failed to take basic precautions to protect their country. Some Americans say it is their individual right to ignore the recommendations of health experts to wear masks, putting themselves and others at increased risk of infection. The internet, which was supposed to give a voice to the voiceless, has become a useful tool for autocrats to control the masses and for political groups to spread disinformation.
China’s freedom of movement comes at the expense of almost every other type. The country is pretty much the most closely watched in the world. The government took extreme social control measures at the start of the epidemic to keep people apart – approaches that are beyond the reach of democratic governments.
“There are actually a lot of parallels between how the Chinese government deals with a virus and how it deals with other issues,” said Howard Chao, a retired California lawyer who invests in corporate start-ups. two sides of the Pacific.
“It’s sort of a one-size-fits-all approach: you just have to fix the problem completely,” he said. “So when it comes to a virus it might not be a bad thing. When it comes to some other issues, maybe not such a good thing.
This realization did not prevent Mr. Chao from enjoying his time in China. Since flying to Shanghai from San Francisco in mid-October, he has hosted business dinners for up to 20 people, went to a jazz bar, saw a movie , visited a seafood market and flew to Shenzhen, southern China, to check out a self-driving car boot.
“This is where I had lunch in Shanghai today,” he wrote on Facebook on November 6, alongside a photo of people having dinner. “Begin to remember what normal life is like.”
Mr Chao said people he had met in China were “bewildered” and “in disbelief” that daily infections in the United States were so high. “They rolled their eyes and thought, ‘How was that possible? “, He said.
Of course, the Chinese government is keen to help the world forget that it silenced those who tried to warn the world in the early days of the epidemic.
But it cannot be denied that China’s success in containing the epidemic has browned Beijing’s image, especially in relation to the failures of the United States. He valued the so-called Chinese model – the Communist Party’s promise to the Chinese public that it will bring prosperity and stability in return for its relentless grip on political power.
“In this year of the pandemic, the Communist Party has provided the public with a social good: stability,” said Dong Haitao, an investor who moved to Beijing from Hong Kong in August.
For Mr. Dong, China’s success gives him the opportunity to achieve financial independence.
Mr. Dong, who is creating an asset management company and a pu’er tea start-up, is optimistic about the Chinese economy. He believes that after the pandemic, China will have even stronger supply chains and a vibrant consumer economy driven by a younger generation more interested in traditional Chinese culture, such as tea, than his generation, who grew up in the era of globalization.
Mr Dong, who moved to Hong Kong from New York in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis, decided to leave Hong Kong because the city felt anemic during the pandemic, as many mainland cities appear to be beaming. energy and hope.
“I don’t think I can find the kind of freedom I want in Hong Kong,” he said.
It is not clear whether this change in perception can be sustained after the end of the pandemic. But the West may find it has to work harder to sell its vision of freedom after China made its model so attractive.
Mr. Clark, the businessman and author, founded a technology consulting firm in Beijing in 1994 and was an advisor to Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, early in the business. Since leaving quarantine in mid-November, he has visited four cities and attended numerous events and conferences, including one with around 900 people.
“Normally China was kind of an adventure,” he said. “But that has changed. Something has changed in the world. “
Mr. Clark said he made the recognition with mixed feelings. “You kind of want it not to be true,” he said, “but it’s kind of true.
Beijing and Shanghai are increasingly cosmopolitan, and their consumers are increasingly sophisticated, he said. This month he went to a Scottish Ball in Beijing. The bagpiper was Chinese because the organizer could not fly anyone from Scotland.
China “looks a bit like Disney’s Epcot Center,” he said. “It’s as if the microcosm of the West is still here, but the West is closed for now.”
For Mr. Clark, it took a while to get used to the crowds again. “If you talk to people at a party or something like that, you can’t just mute someone if they’re boring,” he says. At the first big event he attended, he said, he noticed that someone had really bad breath.
“I’m like, oh my gosh, I haven’t had to go through this in nine months because everyone was wearing masks and you didn’t see anyone,” Mr. Clark said.
“I feel like I’m living in the future here,” even thinking about the bad breath, he says. “I mean, it’s like, ‘Get ready’.”
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