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It took me 153 days to get from my home in Virginia to Beijing. Previously, it only took 15 hours and had become so normal that it felt like a short trip through the city. Not anymore. The ERA of COVID-19 has paralyzed the global air for more than a year, and China’s COVID-0 policy has continued to make the country almost as hermetically closed as its communist neighbor North Korea, with a decline in foreign arrivals of nearly 80%.
At a time when mutual isolation has profoundly unbalanced the Beijing-Washington relationship, I still think it was imperative to leave. My destination was Beijing, but I had to go through San Francisco for a week of COVID-19 testing, then quarantine in Shanghai for 3 weeks, get permission to go to Beijing, and then quarantine there for another two weeks. But I started my way through that intimidating glove when my plans began to fall apart. After a first flight to San Francisco got stuck in the same old delays due to staff shortages and refueling, I was in the process of passing my first of the 3 PCR tests needed to board my flight to Shanghai when the U. S. government was in the process of passing my first of the 3 PCR tests needed to board my flight to Shanghai. The U. S. Navy issued a warning on April 8. It is not essential, due to the harsh closure of the city.
Even though I wanted to board this flight, I nevertheless followed the universal recommendation of friends and colleagues and made the painful decision not to. it lasted two months. The citizens suffered tremendously, and a traveling friend, an American lawyer who traveled to Shanghai just before the acknowledgment was issued, found himself sitting in a hotel there for six weeks, and then, unable to do anything or see anyone. , turned around in frustration and went home.
It took me 153 days to get from my home in Virginia to Beijing. Previously, it only took 15 hours and had become so normal that it felt like a short trip through the city. Not anymore. The ERA of COVID-19 has paralyzed the global air for more than a year, and China’s COVID-0 policy has continued to make the country almost as hermetically closed as its communist neighbor North Korea, with a decline in foreign arrivals of nearly 80%.
At a time when mutual isolation has profoundly unbalanced the Beijing-Washington relationship, I still think it was imperative to leave. My destination was Beijing, but I had to go through San Francisco for a week of COVID-19 testing, then quarantine in Shanghai for 3 weeks, get permission to go to Beijing, and then quarantine there for another two weeks. But I started my way through that intimidating glove when my plans began to fall apart. After a first flight to San Francisco got stuck in the same old delays due to staff shortages and refueling, I was in the process of passing my first of the 3 PCR tests needed to board my flight to Shanghai when the U. S. government was in the process of passing my first of the 3 PCR tests needed to board my flight to Shanghai. The U. S. Navy issued a warning on April 8. It is not essential, due to the harsh closure of the city.
Even though I wanted to board this flight, I nevertheless followed the universal recommendation of friends and colleagues and made the painful decision not to. it lasted two months. The citizens suffered tremendously, and a traveling friend, an American lawyer who traveled to Shanghai just before the acknowledgment was issued, found himself sitting in a hotel there for six weeks, and then, unable to do anything or see anyone. , turned around in frustration and went home.
Since I wasn’t in a position to throw in the towel, I turned to Plan B and instead did a “friends tour” and stopped in Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan. If I can’t move on to China, maybe I’ll reach out, resume fieldwork and talks, and see firsthand how others look at China and U. S. -China relations.
But moving to Asia in the spring of 2022 is no small feat. There was a mandatory 10-day quarantine for all visitors from Taiwan and Japan, a three-day quarantine for arrivals from places designated as high-risk. The bureaucratic judgments had not been maintained. reality, since South Korea had long ago surpassed its peak of cases, while the number of Taiwan at that time was getting faster and faster, and exceeded 44,000 the day I left, however, those who arrived in Japan from Taiwan did not face quarantine, this leads some South Koreans to allege intentional discrimination (South Korea was removed from Japan’s quarantine list a few weeks later).
But the stressful sailing and waiting were worth more than once I was released and was able to tour those villages and meet people. I accumulated dozens of meetings in 22 days with officials, business leaders, journalists, academics, old friends and host families. .
This prolonged detour left me deeply inspired through the navigation skills of those places. I’ve noticed how well all 3 have controlled the pandemic. Their responses were directed through their bureaucracies of public aptitude, many of whose leaders studied or worked in the United States. followed non-unusual sense practices, adding masking and social distancing.
In Taiwan, the Minister of Health holds a hands-on press conference every afternoon, where he announces last day’s data on cases, hospitalizations and deaths using undeniable graphs placed on portable tables. And although all three had strict restrictions until 2021, once when the most virulent omicron variant appeared, they learned that their own versions of zero-COVID would not be sustainable. Therefore, they doubled their vaccination efforts, received treatments, strengthened their fitness infrastructure, readjusted public expectations, gradually opened their doors, and tried to maintain normalcy as much as possible.
The results: Cases increased dramatically in 2022, but death rates remained incredibly low, accumulating about 0. 2% in Japan and Taiwan and 0. 1% in South Korea, compared to 0. 6% in China and 1. 1% in the United States. I have encountered occasional recriminations, social acceptance has been created as true, and other people who oppose vaccines are few and far between. that Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen elected him as vice president during his first term. He helped lead Taiwan’s first political reaction to COVID-19 and left the still-revered workplace, so there are rumors that he could run for president in 2024.
The 3 contrast sharply with China, which has kept the number of deaths low but does not need to abandon its draconian zero-COVID strategy and uses proven mRNA vaccines, and the United States, which has played a central role in the progression of the vaccine but has not yet lost more than a million lives to the disease and noticed that social acceptance was true and disappeared. It is hard to conceive of Anthony Fauci being the unifying figure in the United States that Chen is in Taiwan.
When it comes to relations with China itself, other people I spoke to in all 3 countries expressed deep considerations about the country’s domestic policy and a more assertive foreign policy under Chinese President Xi Jinping, reflecting the knowledge of a vote indicating that China’s approval ratings were declining. among other people in China. These and other countries. And the vast majority I met were concerned but eager to cooperate with the United States on many fronts, adding strengthening military deterrence, restricting generation flows to China, creating resilient supply chains, and fighting Chinese economic coercion. “Economic security” is the new buzzword that is ubiquitous in all 3 regions.
At the same time, however, as sailors facing the headwind, America’s East Asian friends are applying, as far as possible, a more nuanced technique for China than is popular in Washington. Whether talking to national security or industry officials, the rhetoric was decidedly less ideologically charged than in the United States. They have a tendency not to see the challenge with China in such Manichean terms and are less fatalistic about the inevitability of a military conflict. Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, believe Xi is less likely to be so aggressive, adding that he will attack Taiwan, because of everything he could lose if things go wrong.
This vision of heaven not falling comes, at least in part, from being a success and being united at home. I felt a sense of self-confidence, but not arrogance, in Taipei, Seoul and Tokyo that is much less unusual in Washington. , unless it is for crusade speeches.
The difference in domestic conditions has a decisive effect on his favorite method of managing China. All three are due to its dependence on China: with 42% of Taiwan’s exports to Chinese markets, 25% from South Korea and 22% from Japan (compared to less than 9% of US exports). But strongly disagree with plans to decouple or strongly isolate the Chinese economy; part of Taiwan’s exports to China are semiconductors. Instead, they seek to peacefully coexist with China. Se have adapted well to China’s booming economy by having significant protections for their own domestic production capabilities, so there is no massive national electorate calling for decoupling. As one Taipei official told me, “trade with China will not harm Taiwan or other democracies. “
In addition, they see interdependence as a two-way competition, in which they try to maximize the influence they have in Beijing or Washington to China and restrict their destructive behavior. I heard this in all three places, but it was the maximum, not unusual. In recent years, Taiwanese have begun to use the word “the non-secular mountain that protects the councheck out” (huguo shenshan) in reference to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) and the island’s dominance in global semiconductor manufacturing. .
Originally meant to describe how TSMC was almost single-handedly stimulating Taiwan’s economy and stock markets, it took on the meaning of some as a kind of talisman that makes it much more likely that the U. S. would be able to do so. The U. S. protects the island from attacks to protect the industry. That’s what Bi-khim Hsiao, Taiwan’s most sensible representative to the United States, meant when she said Taiwan’s purpose was its “strategic relevance. “its technologies.
But Japan has left an even more indelible mark on the region’s trajectory, persuading Washington and others to settle for some of its concepts as useful complements to U. S. initiatives. It was Japan that invented the concept of a “free and open Indo-Pacific”; presented one of the first major options to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (Blue Dot Network); proposed the concept of “knowledge-free with confidence” as a normative option for Chinese knowledge practices; kept the Trans-Pacific Partnership alive and developing even after the U. S. withdrawal; and driven by the coordination of technological constraints while maintaining broad economic ties with China.
And Japan has played a central role in persuading Southeast Asian countries to sign up for the U. S. -led Indo-Pacific economic framework, not because it’s in love with the concept: a Japanese official told me, frankly, that it “doesn’t give anything attractive,” but because it needs to keep the U. S. in the U. S. U. S. economically connected to the region and involved in multilateral negotiations in any and all possible ways.
My involuntary visit to the region prepared me much more for my arrival in China. America’s friends in Northeast Asia have much to be proud of. In fact, he was jealous of his smart government and social cohesion.
Beijing claims it only disagrees with the US. Or others who disagree with China are being manipulated through Washington. But this holiday reminded me of the narrowness of such a scenario and the desire to open our perspective. The world does not face a dichotomous selection between Beijing and Washington. Beijing cannot convincingly say that only the U. S. The U. S. has problems with its habit or that Beijing will have to stick to zero-COVID because the only option would be without restrictions and degrees of death in the U. S. USA
By contrast, Washington has friends who support it in Taipei, Seoul and Tokyo, but they are presenting their own approaches to China and foreign affairs more broadly. they are loans of value. In short, partnership is a two-way street and is generally a smart thing for all parties involved.
Fast forward a few months, and several PCR tests and flight paths later, now is the time to make smart use of this data. More than 150 days after taking that long and frustrating flight to San Francisco, despite everything, I landed in a cloudless Beijing. A few hours later, after going through a makeshift maze overseen by staff members, all dressed in the same white plastic protective gear, I checked into my hotel and found my way home for the next 10 days. It was a long and strange journey, but thanks to all the detours, I will be more prepared than a few months ago for what awaits me when the door of my quarantine opens regardless.
Scott Kennedy is a senior advisor and president of Chinese economics and business administration at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
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