(The following article by Chinese Trotskyists is a great article. However, we would address two things:
First, the article says: "The author of that statement endows that one moment of 1949 with the special status of being the handmaiden of China’s economic growth."
The foundation of the infrastructure developed during China's previous period as a deformed workers state is essential to explaining China's rise. The explosive growth of basic infrastructure is what enabled the import of advanced productive capital from the West.
Secondly, the article quotes a book about China produced by the RCI. Writings from this tendency can only produce confusion on the question of the nature of China and similar states. They hold to an objectivist analysis like Pabloism, one in which a disembodied "permanent revolution" was working itself out through whatever forces were available, instead of a conscious working class. They took this as far as to call Kampuchea, Burma, Syria, Angola, Mozambique, Aden, Benin, Ethiopia, Somalia, Afghanistan - and God knows which others - as all being "workers' states." Suffice to say this is nonsense of the highest order.
Finally, we wish to emphasize the conclusion that appeared in earlier drafts of this article [see the Chinese Trotskyist website]:
The International Committee is behaving today like Gerry Healy's support for the Middle Eastern countries, but unfortunately the International Committee, which has been through this once, has not learned the lessons of its previous experience, and today the International Committee of the Fourth International is approaching infinitely closer to the International Committee under Gerry Healy in all of its behaviors. Perhaps the next collapse of the International Committee is just around the corner to be the next lesson of history. The same history will happen twice; the first time will be a tragedy, while the second time will be nothing more than a farce.)
by a Chinese Trotskyist
Permanent Revolution: The WSWS writes a fairy tale about China's zero-Covid policy: Response from a Chinese Trotskyist
On March 24, the online journal of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), The World Socialist Web Site (WSWS), published an article titled “Five Years of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Response of the World Socialist Web Site.”[1] In it, the WSWS reiterated its long-held view that the Chinese government initially sought to contain the pandemic but abandoned its public health measures under the pressure of capital from the United States and other countries. To quote the WSWS article, On January 23, 2020, facing growing pressure from a restive working class, Chinese authorities initiated the first Zero-COVID elimination policy in the world, with 13 million people in Wuhan beginning the first mass lockdown in human history. This policy expanded throughout Hubei province and was combined with a program of regular mass testing, rigorous contact tracing, the safe isolation of infected patients, travel restrictions and universal masking, a comprehensive suite of public health measures designed to stop viral transmission. Seventy-six days later, all of Chinese society exited from these lockdowns and largely resumed normal life.
Until China abandoned its zero-Covid policy in December 2022, the WSWS never wrote a word of criticism of the response of the Chinese government to the pandemic. For instance take this statement from an “inquest” published by the WSWS in December of 2021:
epidemic control measures in Chongqing and elsewhere in China, based upon basic principles of epidemiology and modern technologies, such as PCR testing and smartphone-based contact tracing, have proved to be effective. It is imperative that scientists, workers, and students push for similar life-saving policies to be adopted around the world.[2]
But the WSWS never conducted any serious investigation into what was really happening in China during the pandemic. Instead, it manufactured a fairy-tale of China heroically resisting the neglect and incompetence of the capitalist powers by projecting its own unique zero-Covid policy. Now a zero-Covid policy is indeed a laudable goal, but the real life implementation of this policy by a corrupt and incompetent bureaucracy inevitably shipwrecked those goals. In what follows we will examine how this policy came into being, how it was implemented by an authoritarian bureaucracy and how it finally ended.
China’s zero-Covid policy as seen from the ground
1. A Government that missed the best timingIn the 1980-84 British TV series “Yes Minister,” we are told what the attitude of a qualified bureaucratic government should be in the face of an event:
1. First, refuse to acknowledge that anything has happened.
2. Second, admit that something has happened, but insist the situation is under control.
3. Third, acknowledge that the matter is serious, but claim that nothing can be done.
4. Fourth, declare that the incident is already in the past.
This pattern of delay, obfuscation, and willful forgetting unfolded in China from the moment the virus was first discovered as Chinese bureaucrats tried to cover up the pandemic and muddle through. It took nearly two full months from the discovery of the coronavirus until the Chinese government officially began implementing protective measures. During this period, many patients paid for their own tests and found this new virus, which was very similar to the SARS coronavirus.[3] Yet once these test reports were issued, the Chinese government immediately forced them to be revised after they were released, and then banned their further dissemination.[4]At the end of December, an ophthalmologist named Li Wenliang privately warned his friends on his personal account that a novel coronavirus had been discovered. He did not intend to spread this information to the broader public. Nevertheless, he was arrested and detained by local police for more than ten days. In the end, he died during the massive outbreak in Wuhan that spring.
Li Wenliang
After two months of suppression, news of the outbreak finally surfaced just as China’s Spring Festival travel rush began in January 2020. The virus quickly spread nationwide. It must be noted that as the Lunar New Year migration started, a vast number of workers returned home from the factories. Most of them came from small cities or poor rural areas, forced to leave their hometowns for work in large cities. With absolutely no protective warnings, the virus was carried across the entire country. Even routine preventative measures like those for avian influenza in China, or policies such as wearing masks in public during periods of heavy pollution, could have significantly slowed the spread of the pandemic.
Map showing spread of coronavirus infections in China as of Feb.2020.
With the arrival of the Chinese Lunar New Year, the Chinese government began large-scale epidemic control measures as Wuhan's medical system was completely overwhelmed by the virus. All hospital beds in Wuhan were full, even forcing some patients from other wards to vacate their beds. The medical system collapsed under the impact of hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of patients. The elderly died in droves, and large numbers of working-class people lost their families.
We do not grant any credibility to the official death toll statistics published by the Chinese government. Officials reclassified a huge number of deaths as being caused by “underlying conditions worsened by COVID-19.” Countless patients with chronic illnesses died without access to medication. If it were not for the spontaneous solidarity exhibited by China’s working class, many would not have survived through that spring.
2. Crude, One-Size-Fits-All Controls
After the outbreak spread, the Chinese government quickly imposed nationwide lockdowns forcibly closing factories, halting business operations, and shutting down schools
Abrupt control measures left countless chronic patients unable to obtain their medications. With Wuhan sealed off, China’s working class showed the most united, spontaneous spirit of mutual aid by sending essential medicines into Wuhan from outside.[5] No matter how harshly the government tried to suppress the strength of the working class, no matter how propaganda distorted their role, workers followed their conscience.
Many doctors, facing dying patients, defied government lockdown orders and secretly performed life-saving surgeries. Workers from every sector donated money to help Wuhan overcome the crisis. Doctors and nurses voluntarily registered to go to Wuhan to ease the medical shortage. Volunteers across industries offered to work in logistics companies to maintain a minimal flow of supplies nationwide. They carried medicines across city walls with their bare hands and feet. Thanks to such selfless volunteers, many chronic patients survived. Without these heroes, countless patients and elderly people in China would likely have faced death.
But unreasonable policies also appeared. To implement central orders, local bureaucrats often doubled down on enforcement. During this period, more than ten pregnant women were refused entry to hospitals because they lacked a 24-hour nucleic acid test certificate, leading to miscarriages or even deaths. Long-haul truck drivers were blocked at highway entrances and exits and spent more than a month in their trucks deprived of the most basic living conditions. A large number of hospitals closed down except for fever clinics, resulting in many patients losing treatment options.
Yet the working class did not initiate a critique of the epidemic control policies themselves. This was due to the influence of traditional Chinese culture where emperors are often portrayed as wise but deceived by corrupt ministers. Local officials may exploit the people, but once an imperial envoy from the central government arrives, problems are expected to be swept away. Influenced by this tradition and decades of government propaganda, most workers blamed only local officials in Wuhan and elsewhere, while believing that the policies originating from the leadership of the CCP were correct. In other words: “The central government had good intentions; it was only local officials who distorted the policy.”
3. Profits of the Medical-Industrial Complex
At the start of the outbreak, demand for masks skyrocketed. Fortunately, since winter and spring are both peak flu seasons and periods of high air pollution, most Chinese people were already in the habit of stockpiling masks. As a result, the early stage of the pandemic did not cause a complete collapse in mask availability. Moreover, because workers traditionally stockpile about half a month’s worth of supplies for the Spring Festival—what we call “New Year goods”—there was some buffer. But once the lockdown orders were issued, large numbers of workers who had returned home for the holiday were unable to return to their factories.
As the epidemic was gradually brought under control, various industries were about to return to normal. But China's medical conglomerates came to the forefront and became even more greedy in their pursuit of profit. In their eyes, epidemic prevention and control measures were not about saving the lives of the poor, but creating new avenues of profit for the rich.
Chinese medicine has long been divided into three categories:
1. Western medicine (xiyao 西药) — modern pharmaceuticals developed through scientific methods.
2. Traditional Chinese medicine (zhongyao 中药) — herbal remedies passed down from ancient times.
3. Patent medicines (zhongchengyao 中成药) — preparations derived from Chinese herbs.
This last process generally involves decocting the herbs, concentrating the decoction into granules, and sealing them in plastic packaging. When patients buy the medicine, they open the packaging, pour out the granules, and reconstitute them with water to make a medicine for consumption. Some traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) preparations are made by adding excipients (often starch) to the decocted soup and concentrating it into tablets, packaged like modern pharmaceuticals.
From a modern medical perspective, the effects of Chinese herbal remedies can often be explained by their active ingredients. But patent medicines are more dubious: during production, the specific active compounds are rarely identified. In clinical double-blind trials, the vast majority of patent medicines have been proven ineffective. Yet, paradoxically, patent medicines are often the most expensive products on the market—typically costing five times more than equivalent Western medicines. Many “effective” patent medicines secretly contain Western drug ingredients.
A typical example: a course of cefixime (a Western antibiotic sold under the brand name Suprax) costs about 40 renminbi, while a course of Pudilan Koufuye (a patent herbal remedy) costs around 200 RMB and is far less effective than cefixime or the simple and reliable roxithromycin. Moreover, the side effects of most patent medicines are vaguely described in labels as “not yet clear.” Despite this, the government still allows them on the market.
Furthermore, in ancient Chinese medicine, heavy metals were frequently used directly in medicinal materials. Ancient Chinese medicine believed that mercury sulfide could treat insomnia, arsenic sulfide could treat leukemia, enhance male sexual function, and even treat oral ulcers and some colds. They even believed that herbs containing aristolochic acid could promote urination. These drugs are still sold at drug prices today, and no one has to pay the price for patients who died due to misleading government advice about the value of traditional Chinese medicines.
As the pandemic spread, the Chinese government, instead of massively expanding the production of modern medicines, aggressively promoted traditional Chinese medicine and patent remedies. From central to local levels, large-scale promotions extolled their alleged antiviral effects, allowing the medical-industrial complex to reap staggering profits. For instance, a box of ibuprofen costs no more than 15 RMB, while a course of Chinese medicine treatment could exceed 200 RMB and still be ineffective. A box of the patent drug Lianhua Qingwen was speculated up to 200 RMB, yet its effectiveness was virtually nil. When the epidemic prevention and control measures were suddenly and completely lifted, the public discovered that the efficacy of these drugs was almost zero.
The producer of Lianhua Qingwen, Yiling Pharmaceutical, saw its owner Wu Yiling become the richest man in Hebei province. By 2020, he had amassed a fortune of $1.5 billion, earning the nickname “the Academician Billionaire.”
Wu Yiling, the 'Academician Billionaire'
Meanwhile, nucleic acid testing also became a tool for profiteering. The Chinese government mandated that all public places nationwide require a nucleic acid test report within one week for entry. In areas with even a single case of COVID-19, a nucleic acid test – known in the west as a polymerase chain reaction or PCR test – within 24 hours was required, infinitely amplifying the profits from nucleic acid testing. China's nucleic acid testing also pioneered a new method: collecting samples from five to ten people together for testing, and then conducting separate nucleic acid tests on those individuals after a case was detected. Over the years, nucleic acid testing providers have reaped enormous profits, and many have discovered that some testing institutions did not send the collected samples to professional testing facilities but instead destroyed them directly.
4. Terror and Repression
As more and more workers began questioning the harsh epidemic control measures, people generally believed that only reasonable precautions—such as wearing masks and taking temperature checks—were necessary. But the Chinese government thought otherwise. Through epidemic prevention measures, the state gained access to the complete movement records of nearly every individual. This gave officials the most direct and crude means to suppress any worker or mass movement.
In 2021, local banks in Henan province embezzled all the deposits of their clients. Although we lack direct evidence linking these banks to government officials, the actions of those officials made the connection obvious. Faced with furious depositors, they did not attempt to arrest the culprits or compensate the victims. Instead, they used epidemic prevention measures to forcibly quarantine all the protesters, repeatedly restricting their ability to leave Zhengzhou or travel to Beijing.
We called the Henan official involved in this case the “Red Code Secretary,” because they weaponized the digital health-code system—turning protesters’ codes red to confine them. When this was exposed, public outrage erupted nationwide. The official in question received a stern warning and was demoted from her administrative positions. Hardly a severe punishment but even this slap on the wrist proved to be a fraud. Just last year, netizens discovered that this very same official had once again assumed a leadership post in Zhengzhou.[6]
Zhang Linlin, the 'Red Code Secretary'.
This convinces us that the incident was a clear example of government officials themselves embezzling citizens’ property and then covering for each other within the bureaucracy.
5. The Reluctant Reopening
How to explain China’s abrupt abandonment of epidemic control measures?
In 2022, Shanghai’s epidemic lockdown left tens of thousands unemployed. The vast majority were migrant workers who had left their hometowns to work in Shanghai. Not only did they lose their jobs, they still had to shoulder extremely high rent and living costs. The same was true across the country: as overzealous control measures dragged on, mass unemployment and economic depression spread across industries. Unlike the well-dressed gentlemen sitting in offices, China’s working class has no unemployment insurance. Losing one’s job simply meant starvation.
And yet these gentlemen, dressed in fine suits, demanded that we obey the government’s epidemic control measures. If we refused, they denounced us as agents of capitalist manipulation!
Furthermore, bureaucratic rule always operates in a crude, one-size-fits-all manner. When the outbreak began, they banned everyone from traveling—even the gravely ill. But when they decided to reopen, they lifted all restrictions at once, without leaving any middle ground. Bureaucrats never consider the so-called interests of the masses; they only seek to achieve their own goals, even by the most brutal means. If a building catches fire, the deaths of a few dozen people mean nothing to them—just numbers in a report. But if the survivors escape, then the officials start fearing for their own positions.
We must also responsibly point out that the government’s decision to abandon epidemic controls was not primarily due to workers’ protests, nor due to “intervention by imperialist transnational capital,” as the World Socialist Web Site claims. The real reason was that after medical-industry capitalists had extracted all possible profits, local governments across China fell into chronic and widespread fiscal deficits. No state can sustain such high levels of spending for years on end, even if held hostage by medical conglomerates. That is why epidemic prevention measures were suddenly abolished in their entirety—rather than gradually eased in response to working-class demands.
For the past 20 years before the pandemic, China had relied on what was known as “land finance.” Governments would first build infrastructure such as subways and high-speed rail, which raised land prices in the area, and then sell the land to real estate companies. When these developers built and sold large housing projects, the government would collect taxes on the transactions, gaining further revenue. At that time, China’s population was still growing rapidly, and people believed cities would keep expanding. Even if a newly-purchased home wasn’t in a prime location, it was assumed that its value would still rise. This expectation sustained the land-finance model.
But once people lost faith in the future—especially with plummeting birth rates during the pandemic—the model collapsed. The result was unfinished construction projects all over the country. This crisis even led to the downfall of Xu Jiayin (Hui Ka Yan), once China’s richest man, who became the world’s most wanted debtor and a global laughingstock.
The collapse of land finance, combined with years of enormous pandemic-control spending, forced the government to abruptly abandon its controls. Overnight, epidemic prevention disappeared. Almost everyone in the country was infected at least once. The sudden reopening caused hospital overcrowding, allowing the medical-industrial complex to seize one last windfall of profits from the pandemic.
6. Criticism of the ICFI
The ICFI once described China’s implementation of a zero-Covid policy as a legacy of the 1949 revolution. [7] But this is utterly absurd. The author of that statement arbitrarily selects one moment, the triumph of the revolution of 1949, out of the last 100 years of Chinese history, strips it out of genuine history and collapses all the other moments of Chinese history. Forgotten is the “Great Leap Forward” of Mao Zedong that resulted in the starvation of 20 million people. The author of that statement endows that one moment of 1949 with the special status of being the handmaiden of China’s economic growth. One can respond that another moment in recent Chinese history, the 1989 massacre of Tien An Men Square might be a more appropriate moment if one wants to pinpoint when Chinese economic growth was ensured, for it was in that moment that the Chinese Stalinist bureaucracy demonstrated that it would follow the road to capitalism and hold onto power regardless of the toll on the Chinese working class. Furthermore, the author contrasts, favorably, China’s handling of the pandemic with India’s, noting that the pandemic, “…was contained by China early on, even as it spreads uncontrollably in India, pushing its death toll past the 400,000 mark.” It’s true that the Modi government’s criminal policies were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands and it’s also true that the zero-Covid policy of the Chinese government was superior to India’s approach even when counting the corruption and incompetence inherent in its implementation. But what happened in the end? It is impossible to get accurate statistical data from official Chinese sources but according to one study, published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Preventions (CDC), when China finally abandoned its pandemic containment measures approximately 1.4 million Chinese died in a short period of time.[8] Should those deaths also be credited as one of the legacies of the 1949 revolution?
In discussions of China in this and other articles on the WSWS, it is frequently emphasized China had a successful revolution in 1949. But what is left out is that China also went through many different historical phases, eventually leading to the restoration of capitalism. Some of the policies carried out during Mao Zedong’s era actually set the infrastructure of China back by decades. This was particularly true of the “Great Leap Forward” and the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”. To quote John Peter Roberts, from his major study of China, ‘China: From permanent revolution to counter revolution’,
Famine was a hallmark of the GLF [Great Leap Forward], rural death rates leapt from 11 to more than 28 per 1,000 people/year in 1960. Population growth rate in Henan, for example, went into reverse and dropped from +22.8% in 1958 to – 4.3% in 1961. Only in 1980 did the CCP admit that at least 20 million people had starved to death during the great famine.
The famine was due to the combination of severe natural disaster and, possibly more importantly, the bureaucratic system itself. The bureaucracy had reduced the area of land sown with grain and insisted that a vast amount of unnecessary work be carried out on the blast furnaces, but a third and important factor was the Anti-Rightist Campaign which scared lower level bureaucrats into exaggerating the harvest to please their superiors. In late August and September, Mao himself, uncritically accepted boastful provincial reports that state grain purchases had been fully met and accomplished in record time. Mao ordered the publication and distribution of these falsehoods with his accompanying observations containing a blistering attack on ‘rightists’, further increasing the pressure on lower rank cadres. Grain procurement by the state based on these false figures played a major causal role in the famine. [9]
It is evident that the Chinese government’s manipulation of and fabrication of false information, so prominently employed during the pandemic has a long pedigree. It played and continues to play a particularly pernicious role in covering up the economic and social catastrophes that could be directly attributed to the policies of the Chinese Stalinist bureaucracy.
The point was nicely summarized by a resident of Wuhan on the one year anniversary of the lockdown, as quoted in the New York Times,
“It has always been this way in China. How many tens of millions died in the Great Leap famine? How many in the Cultural Revolution,” says Ai Xiaoming, a retired professor in Wuhan who, like quite a few residents, kept an online diary about the lockdown. “Everything can be forgotten with the passage of time. You don’t see it, hear it or report it.” [10]
The WSWS fails to point out that Chinese society today is fully privatized, and that its medical-industrial complex is part of international capital. This is an extremely serious and crucial point, because it determines for whom the state’s measures are carried out.
China’s state apparatus and medical conglomerates whether classified as privately held or “state-owned” exist to serve the interests of Chinese capitalism, not the health and lives of the working class. China’s zero-Covid policy during the pandemic was no exception to this sober truth. When examined from the ground up, China’s highly touted zero-Covid policy looks much different that the fairy tale disseminated by the WSWS.
7. Afterword: A note on sources.
I am not entirely sure how the coronavirus outbreak of 2003 in China should be referred to in the English context. In Chinese, we generally call the 2003 outbreak “atypical pneumonia” (非典型冠状病毒) or SARS, while the virus of 2019 is called the “novel coronavirus.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20200131074029/http://china.caixin.com/2020-01-31/101509761.html
This is an interview with a doctor who was punished by the Chinese authorities at the time. The doctor had merely posted on his private social media account to warn his friends that he had discovered a virus similar to the 2003 SARS coronavirus. It was only meant as personal advice to friends and was never intended for public dissemination. Nevertheless, he was arrested by local police and detained for more than ten days.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/20/chinese-inquiry-exonerates-coronavirus-whistleblower-doctor-li-wenliang
This article reports that after the doctor tragically contracted the coronavirus and died, the CCP exonerated him posthumously and honored him as a martyr. But responsibility was shifted entirely onto the grassroots police, without holding higher government officials accountable for labeling his warning as “rumor-mongering.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/coronavirus-wuhan-doctor-ai-fen-speaks-out-against-authorities
This piece concerns a female doctor who, after realizing that the virus could be transmitted between humans, publicly refuted the official claim that human-to-human transmission was impossible. In the early stage, however, most doctors believed the virus’s structure was very similar to the SARS coronavirus of 2003.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200227094018/https://china.caixin.com/2020-02-26/101520972.html
This news report describes how the government ordered testing institutions to suppress information once the coronavirus was detected. Some severely ill patients had even paid for genetic sequencing tests themselves. As soon as these institutions identified the pathogen as a coronavirus, the authorities forced them to destroy the samples and forbade publication of the results. In fact, as early as December 25, 2019, laboratories had already found the virus to be extremely similar to the 2003 SARS coronavirus. Yet the Chinese government insisted that the similarity was only discovered on January 7.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200213042126/http://www.xinhuanet.com/renshi/2020-02/13/c_1125568253.htm
This is the official report that the mayor and Party secretary of Wuhan were dismissed for mishandling the epidemic response.
Many key materials about the outbreak have since been permanently erased from the Chinese internet. I asked friends and many still vividly recall a massive Spring Festival banquet held in a Wuhan residential community (the so-called “Ten-Thousand-People Banquet”), but we can no longer find reliable records of it. During this period, my main focus has been searching for materials on how the Chinese government used epidemic prevention both as a means of profit-making and as a tool for suppressing protests.
https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1808052327181584499&wfr=spider&for=pc&searchword=%E7%BA%A2%E7%A0%81%E4%B9%A6%E8%AE%B0
I am still organizing more related materials. The Chinese government deleted vast amounts of pandemic-related content, making it very difficult to find sources. I am also currently searching for evidence regarding monopolistic control by certain enterprises during the epidemic.
[3] In Chinese, we generally call the 2003 outbreak “atypical pneumonia” (非典型冠状病毒) or SARS, while the virus of 2019 is called the “novel coronavirus.” The information from these tests should have been a huge warning to Chinese authorities that a new and potentially extremely dangerous form of the coronavirus was being spread to humans.
[4] https://web.archive.org/web/20200227094018/https://china.caixin.com/2020-02-26/101520972.html
Some quotes from this important piece of investigative journalism in China
An individual from a gene sequencing company revealed that on January 1, 2020, he received a phone call from an official of the Hubei Provincial Health Commission, informing him that if any COVID-19 case samples were sent for testing in Wuhan, they could not be tested; existing case samples must be destroyed, and sample information, related papers, and data could not be disclosed to the public. "If you detect any in the future, you must report to us."
Looking back at those days from the end of December 2019 to the beginning of January this year, it should have been a crucial moment that determined the fate of countless people. But at that time, the public was completely unaware of the consequences that this virus would later cause.
An individual from a gene sequencing company revealed that on January 1, 2020, he received a phone call from an official of the Hubei Provincial Health Commission, informing him that if any COVID-19 case samples were sent for testing in Wuhan, they could not be tested; existing case samples must be destroyed, and sample information, related papers, and data could not be disclosed to the public. "If you detect any in the future, you must report to us."
[7] See 100 years since the founding of the Chinese Communist Party - World Socialist Web Site, where the author writes
“That they are compelled to still speak of socialism and even proclaim that their capitalist policies are guided by Marxism is testament to the enduring identification of the Chinese masses with gains of the 1949 revolution. China’s staggering economic development over the past three decades reflect in a contradictory way the impact of the Chinese revolution. It would not have been possible without the far-reaching social reforms introduced by that revolution.
To understand the significance of the Chinese revolution, one only has to ask the question: Why has such development not taken place in India? The contrast between the two countries has found sharp expression in the COVID-19 pandemic, which was contained by China early on, even as it spreads uncontrollably in India, pushing its death toll past the 400,000 mark.”
