Thought of the Day - September 23 2021 - Olympic Fever

Here we go again ( Thought of the Day - April 26 2021 - The Tokyo Olympics ). It may surprise many of you that the Olympics are less than six months away - in case you missed a memo, I am talking about the Winter Olympics in Beijing China scheduled for February 2022.

Most of China has been virus-free for eighteen months now. A neighbour, who has been in China

for almost two years now, called some months back as he was surprised to see the media reporting that we were still having issues here. China was one of the few countries that went for a "COVID-Zero" strategy ( Thought of the Day - November 25 - COVID Zero ). China’s “zero tolerance” meant trying to isolate every case and stop transmission. While this has helped keep the country largely free of disease, of course, the public and local businesses are paying a high price. On the other hand, as we have talked about before ( Thought of the Day - September 17 2021 - Economic Musings ), China was the only major economy to grow last year after the ruling party declared the virus under control in March 2020 and allowed factories, shops and offices to reopen.

The government announced last week it had vaccinated just over 1 billion people, or 71% of its population. Regulators have given emergency approval to nine coronavirus vaccines, but most are made by local companies Sinopharm or Sinovac.

China is still closed to most foreign visitors and discourages its own public from travelling. Since July of this year, there have been some outbreaks as the more contagious Delta variant was brought into the country by travellers. But new cases number are in the hundreds, not the tens of thousands as seen in other countries.

“People are clearly worried that they could get trapped in tourist destinations if COVID cases emerge,” economist Iris Pang of ING. For example, authorities on September 12th suspended most access to Putian, a city of 2.9 million people in Fujian province, after an outbreak that might have begun with a resident who returned from Singapore. Cinemas, bars and other public facilities were all closed. Supermarkets and restaurants were ordered to limit customer numbers. Xiamen, a coastal business center in Fujian with 3.5 million people, closed off access to some neighbourhoods and shut down schools after cases were detected there.

The government has yet to give final details on anti-coronavirus measures for the Winter Games. Some 2,900 athletes are due to compete, 800 in the Paralympic Winter Games on March 4-13, bringing with them many thousands more in support staff. But this does not necessarily mean no spectators. Local officials have been studying how Tokyo managed coronavirus risks for athletes and the decision there to not have crowds. The government has already said that, at least at this stage, that they are expecting full stands of spectators. While we don't know how many of these will be foreigners but certainly the games will be well-supported by spectators from China: no question. Moreover, the competition venues are already ready as they, supposedly, have already hosted events as dry-runs.

Taizicheng Snow Town

As happened with Japan, this will be another growing story in the coming months. Not just for what the country is up to to meet the challenge of hosting such an event in the midst of a pandemic, but also fueled by the expected level of sabre-rattling that western world countries are bound to do. We will undoubtedly have some interesting spectacles ahead.

Cheers

Cliff