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Chinese Lockdowns Expand, Raising More Questions About Beijing’s Motives For Shutting Down
Growing lockdowns in China have me believing more and more that the country isn’t exactly crestfallen about the supply chain crisis it is creating for the rest of the world.
Growing lockdowns in China have me believing more and more that the country isn’t exactly crestfallen about the supply chain crisis it is creating for the rest of the world.
Days ago, I wrote about suspicions I had about China’s latest round of Covid lockdowns. In that piece, I drew the conclusion that the country’s “Covid Zero” plan is irrational and egregious, and that China’s lockdowns may have to do with something more than Covid.
The three scenarios I floated for the potential reason China was “overshooting the mark” with its draconian lockdowns were:
- The CCP may be trying to usurp more power
- There may be something about Covid that China knows that the rest of the world still doesn’t know
- China is looking for an excuse to slow its production to put pressure on the Western world at a time when it is trying to separate further, economically, from the West
Today, I’m leaning toward reason number three. That’s because as of this past weekend, China is now expanding its lockdowns further across the country. Oh, and did I mentioned that China’s top oil and gas producer has also all of a sudden decided it is going to cease doing business with Britain, Canada and the United States?
First, let’s identify some of the interesting ways that lockdowns are spreading across the country. One lockdown happens to hit California-based Apple, Inc. in the gut. The “Zhengzhou Airport Economic Zone, a central Chinese manufacturing area that includes Apple Inc supplier Foxconn, announced a 14-day lockdown on Friday to be adjusted according to the epidemic situation,” according to Reuters.
Additionally, the country has tightened controls in northwestern China, where in the city of Xian, residents were told “to avoid unnecessary trips outside their residential compounds and encouraged companies to have employees work from home or live at their workplace”.
Suzhou also told its residents that “all employees capable of working from home must do so, and residential compounds and company campuses should avoid unnecessary entry of people and vehicles,” the report noted.
All told, we are witnessing a significant increase in the intensity of lockdowns across China – the very same actions that led us to supply chain hell in 2020 to begin with.
