The Collectivist Experiment
How Black Mirror Became Reality in China
Despite the media blackout on the world’s largest concentration camp, the city of Shanghai, we are learning more every hour about the atrocities by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). More than 25 million people are currently locked down in the city in order to “combat a Covid-19 outbreak.” This is not the same kind of voluntary, albeit criminally propagandized, “lockdowns” that we had in the United States.
The CCP deployed an army of robots and drones armed with speakers and cameras to blanket the city warning of the draconian punishments awaiting anyone who leaves their apartment, or even is spotted on their balcony without a mask on. Videos have emerged via social media from the city of authorities dragging a man out of his own apartment, so called “Covid Enforcement Agents” chasing down a Corgi and beating it to death with a shovel, bags of live cats being tossed around, and people jumping to their death from their luxury apartments.
There are many things that those in liberal western democracies who are inclined to acquiesce to government restrictions need to learn from what is happening in China right now. Most importantly, there is an unspoken expectation that in developed first world countries with a high standard of living there is an invisible wall of protection that will save us from devolving into an authoritarian state. Not only is this facially false, we even have proof of it here in the United States with the gulag known as the DC Jail.
Leaving aside the lessons to be derived from the situation in Shanghai right now, what are the reasons behind it?
China from the beginning of the “pandemic” adopted a Zero Covid Policy. For month after month there were 0 cases reported out of China which led many who were studying the situation to assume that the CCP was fixing the numbers. This achieved two goals for China, 1) save face on the international stage, but more importantly, 2) encourage their ideological adversaries in the West to follow their self-destructive lockdowns since they have “proven successful” in keeping China’s cases down.
It turns out that the only thing these lockdowns were effective at keeping down was economic growth. Rather than the anticipated 2.5% global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth that was anticipated in 2020, the world economy shrank by 4.9% according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Yet, defying the odds, China who was hit first by the virus actually fared pretty well, and exceeded expectations by comparison to every other major economy.
According to the Boren Project analysis on the economic consequences of the pandemic (aka lockdowns) they found that
It was low- and middle-income emerging economies that were better able to sustain a growth trajectory throughout the 2020 global economic crisis. In fact, China, which the COVID-19 pandemic hit first, has been the only trillion-dollar economy that sustained positive economic growth in 2020.
As the Chinese centrally planned economy continues to struggle, one of their best paths forward is to damage the stability of Western governments and economies. Locking down a city of over 25 million for a few thousand cases and only 3 reported Covid-19 deaths in elderly people with preexisting conditions may seem to defy logic, but the reason behind it has nothing to do with public health. First of all, if China can revive the fear of Covid they so masterfully created the first time round and stampede America and others into another lockdown it would be fantastic for Chinese national interests. Second of all, Shanghai is the busiest port in the world handling more than 30 million containers annually, it has now been shut down completely for weeks serving to make the existing supply chain crisis even worse.
As shelves continue to lay bare in American supermarkets the current administration has been hell bent on blaming it on Putin and Texas Governor Greg Abbot’s border security policy. For some reason Biden has gone out of his way to NOT blame the CCP’s inhumane and totalitarian lockdowns. We may never know why, perhaps the answer to this mystery lies on Hunter Biden’s laptop?
In any event, China is currently running the largest, most high tech, gulag this world has ever seen. The evils behind the collectivist ideals that govern Chinese policy are on full display. If you want to see why individualism ought to be valued above collectivism, capitalism above communism, and liberty above security look no further than the living nightmare Shanghai residents are enduring.