Duncan Clark’s flight rolled off the runway in Paris in late October when President Emmanuel Macron announced a second national exclusion in France. The country had nearly 50,000 new Covid-19 infections that day. The United States had nearly 100,000.
He sighed in relief. He’s on his way to China. That day, 25 new infections were reported, all of which came from abroad.
Mr Clark, a businessman and writer, returned to China after spending nine months in the United States and France, his longest time away from the country since moving to Beijing in 1994. He has been spending more time outside China lately. a few years to get away from air pollution, censored internet and an increasingly depressed political environment.
But when he returned in October, he felt something new: safe, energetic and free.
“The ability to just lead a normal life is pretty incredible,” he said.
While many countries are still declining Covid-19, China – where the pandemic originated – has become one of the safest places in the world. The country reported fewer than 100,000 infections during 2020. The United States has been reporting more than that every day since early November.
China seems ‘normal’ in the pre-pandemic world. Restaurants are crowded. Hotels are full. Long queues form outside stores with luxury brands. Instead of Zoom calls, people gather face-to-face to do business or to celebrate the new year.
The country will be the only major economy to grow over the past year. Although such predictions are often more art than science, one outfit predicts that the Chinese economy will surpass that of the United States in 2028 – five years earlier than previously predicted.
The pandemic has heightened many perceptions, including ideas about freedom. Citizens of China do not have freedom of speech, freedom of worship or freedom of fear – three of the four freedoms articulated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt – but they do have the freedom to move around and lead a normal daily life. . . In a pandemic year, many of the people of the world will envy this most basic form of freedom.
The global crisis could create doubts about other kinds of freedom. Nearly half of eligible Americans support a president who ignores science and does not take basic precautions to protect their country. Some Americans claim that it is the right of individuals to ignore the recommendations of health experts about wearing masks, thus increasing themselves and others the risk of infection. The internet, which was supposed to give voiceless people votes, has become a useful tool for autocrats to control the masses and political groups to spread misinformation.
China’s freedom of movement comes at the expense of almost every other species. The country is about the most interviewed in the world. At the beginning of the outbreak, the government took extreme social controls to keep people apart – approaches that are beyond the reach of democratic governments.
“There are actually a lot of parallels between the way the Chinese government treats a virus and the way they treat other problems,” said Howard Chao, a retired lawyer in California who invests in new ventures on both sides of the Pacific. .
“It’s a kind of approach: take care of the problem completely,” he said. “As far as a virus is concerned, it might not be too bad. When it comes to certain other issues, maybe not such a good thing. ‘
The realization did not prevent Mr. Chao did not enjoy his time in China. Since flying from San Francisco to Shanghai in mid-October, he has hosted business dinners attended by as many as 20 people, gone to a jazz bar, seen a movie, visited a seafood market and headed to Shenzhen in the south. flew from China to watch a self-driving car startup.
“This is where I had lunch in Shanghai today,” he wrote on Facebook on November 6, along with a photo of people eating. “Start remembering what normal life looks like.”
Mr. Chao said the people he met in China were “confused” and “unbelievable” that American daily infections were so high. “They rolled their eyes and were like, ‘How was that even possible?'” He said.
The Chinese government is, of course, eager to help the world forget that it has silenced those who tried to warn the world in the early days of the outbreak.
But there is no denying that China’s success in curbing the outbreak has destroyed the image of Beijing, especially when compared to the failures of the United States. This gave the so-called China model currency – the Communist Party’s promise to the Chinese public that it would deliver prosperity and stability in exchange for its relentless grip on political power.
“In this year of pandemic, the Communist Party has provided the public with a social benefit: stability,” said Dong Haitao, an investor who moved from Hong Kong to Beijing in August.
For mr. Dong’s success gives China the opportunity to gain financial independence.
Mr. Dong, which is setting up an asset management business as well as a port-based business, is strong in the Chinese economy. He believes that after the pandemic, China will have even stronger supply chains and a vibrant consumer economy driven by a young generation more interested in China’s traditional culture, such as tea, than its generation, which grew up in the era of globalization.
Mr. Dong, who moved from New York to Hong Kong in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis, decided to leave Hong Kong because the city felt bloodthirsty during the pandemic, while many mainland cities seem to be glowing with energy and hope.
“I do not think I can find the kind of freedom I want in Hong Kong,” he said.
It is not clear whether this perception shift can be sustained after the pandemic has ended. But the West may find that it has to work harder to sell its vision of freedom after China made its model look so attractive.
Mr Clark, the businessman and author, founded a technology consulting firm in Beijing in 1994 and was an adviser to Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, in the early days of the business. Since leaving quarantine in mid-November, he has traveled to four cities and attended many events and conferences, including one with about 900 people.
“Normally China was an adventure,” he said. “But it turned around. Something has changed in the world. ”
Mr Clark said he did the acknowledgment with mixed feelings. “You want it not to be true,” he said, “but it’s kind of true.”
Beijing and Shanghai are becoming increasingly cosmopolitan, and their consumers are becoming more sophisticated, he said. This month he went to a Scottish ball in Beijing. The bagpipe was Chinese because the organizer could not fly in anyone from Scotland.
China ‘feels a bit like the Epcot Center at Disney,’ he said. “It is as if the microcosm of the West is still here, but the West is closed at the moment.”
For mr. Clark got used to being in crowds again. “When you talk to people at a party or something, you can not just silence someone if they are annoying,” he said. According to the first big event he attended, he noticed that someone was really having a bad breath.
“I’m like, oh my God, I did not have to experience this for nine months, because everyone was wearing masks and you did not see anyone,” he said. Clark said.
“I feel like I’m going to live here in the future,” even if I think of bad breath, he said. “I mean, it’s like, ‘Get ready. ”