China’s Changing COVID-19 Policies: Market and Public Health

After the outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020, China took fast and decisive measures and successfully contained the spread of the virus. While the rest of the world saw huge human and social costs in the pandemic, the Chinese mainland for about two years was largely free from COVID. The zero-COVID model, however, met great challenges since early 2022. Despite some efforts to save the zero-COVID model, in November 2022 the Chinese government loosened its signature COVID controls during the pandemic and switched to the opposite. This article reviews the evolution of Chinese COVID policies and places the dramatic turns in the context of the changing Chinese political economy. The analysis provides a critique of some commonly held beliefs that attribute China’s policy changes to general social pressure, economic challenges, or individual power struggles. The findings show that the changing material circumstances of the Chinese elites including increasing virus transmissibility, bureaucratic fatigue, and changing global conditions drove the transition from zero-COVID to a rapid relaxation. JEL Classification: P2, I1