China shows way out of lockdown

As millions of people in Europe and North America begin to emerge from weeks of novel coronavirus lockdown, some are looking at China's experience to learn the best way to get back to work.

Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates said countries can learn from those with strong testing systems in place to identify problems ahead.

China had been conservative about opening up, he wrote in a blog, and had so far avoided any significant rebound.

Gates cited the example of Microsoft China, which has around 6,200 employees, half of whom are now coming into work.

"They are continuing to provide support to employees who want to work at home. They insist people with symptoms stay home." Gates wrote. "They require masks and provide hand sanitizer and do more intensive cleaning. Even at work, they apply distancing rules and only allow travel for exceptional reasons."

In a separate interview with the Financial Times, Gates said at the peak of the European outbreaks: "China, which had a lot of cases, now is in a very different state where they are able to get most people going back to school and back to work. And so there's lessons about, what did they do to drop the numbers? And what are they doing to avoid a rebound?"

Italy, one of the worst affected European countries in terms of its COVID-19 death toll, has begun the slow return to normal by reopening construction sites and factories, with restaurants reopening for takeaway services.

In Spain, people have been allowed out for the first time after a 48-day lockdown and face masks have become mandatory on public transport. Some countries have even contemplated restarting the interrupted soccer season, although games are likely to be played in empty stadiums.

In the United Kingdom, which has yet to announce its own back-to-work measures, the CEO of construction consultancy Gleeds International Graham Harle said "If we look to China, where they are starting to relax restrictions, it may provide a guide to our own treatment of sites post-pandemic."

Writing in trade paper Construction News, he cautioned: "As China's lead shows, we are some way off business returning to what we knew as normal. We must be prepared to face this reality over the long term."

That caution was echoed by Anthony Costello, professor of global health and sustainable development at University College London. Writing in The Guardian, he contrasted China's swift response to the crisis with the UK's slow start.

Pointing to China's varied lockdown strategy across its regions, he wrote: "Rather than maintaining a prolonged lockdown, governments can target measures at people who actually have (novel) coronavirus. This would likely be far less disruptive to the economy."

China's Global Times asked what China could offer the world as more countries prepared to ease restrictions and lift city lockdowns. It quoted experts who questioned whether Western governments were ready or able to follow the Chinese example of a cautious reopening.

"The United States and most European countries are not even close to being in a situation to safely lift the lockdown," John Ross, a senior fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at the Renmin University of China, told the Global Times last week.

As a number of US states pushed to restart businesses and President Donald Trump unveiled a four-step back-to-work plan, statistics showed that no state opting to reopen had come close to the government recommended drop in COVID-19 cases over a 14-day period.

"Any rush to reopen without adequate testing and tracing, far more than now under way, will cause a resurgence of the disease and another and longer economic crisis," said former US labour secretary Robert Reich.

He claimed Trump was trying to force the economy to reopen in order to boost his re-election prospects in November and was "selling out Americans' health to seal the deal".

CNBC business channel warned that a decision by the biggest US companies to order staff back to work would be fraught with risk without widespread COVID-19 testing.

Some industries, such as retail, it reported, were looking to China for guidance.

Automakers could also look to China for answers on how to safely restart business activity, CNBC said. "Carmakers and suppliers in China have implemented protocols to ensure working conditions were safe to return to for employees," the channel reported.

Inevitably, national governments will chart their own course out of the present crisis, measuring health benefits against economic loss.

But, as a commentary published by the World Economic Forum pointed out, restarting the global economy will require international cooperation.

"The world that emerges from the (novel) coronavirus pandemic may be a warring collection of countries that are more closed off and nationalistic than before," it warned. "But without rapid and effective global cooperation, the world may not exit this crisis safely at all."

Harvey Morris is a senior media consultant for China Daily UK