5. Zero-Covid

China’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic embodies all of the engineering state’s merits and madnesses. It is a powerful reminder of how the engineering state could accomplish things that few other countries would even attempt, while revealing how its literal minded enforcement can lead to tragic results for human well-being and freedom. I lived through all three years of the zero-Covid strategy that China pursued to stomp out the highly transmissible virus. In the first year, the country felt like a realm of serene calm after it pushed out the virus that was raging far away.

It is a little bit difficult to praise the US response to Covid. In retrospect, the whole thing looks shambolic, with different states having different policies, mostly made worse under Donald Trump’s chaotic management. Americans stumbled into learning to live with the virus in large part because of the ineffectualness of the government. But the United States (under Trump’s Operation Warp Speed) produced mRNA vaccines that China could not. And in retrospect, China’s response to Covid looks shambolic as well. The engineering state tried as hard as it could to hold on to earlier triumphs, until it was forced to let everything go.

When I think back to this moment, it’s the lack of fever medications that really sticks with me. For three years, the government made it difficult for people to buy ibuprofen, Advil, and other fever reducers for fear that people might disguise their fevers to avoid detection. During an outbreak, pharmacies limited purchases of fever meds or removed fever meds from their shelves entirely. Therefore, much of the Chinese population met this Covid wave without medication on hand. As best as I can tell, China is the only country that denied its people fever medications during a fever-producing pandemic. It is a perfect encapsulation of the engineering state’s twisted logic.

Propaganda authorities had no special warning, though they shifted seamlessly from declaring that the virus must be stomped out in one week to saying that everyone had to be responsible for their own health the next. It felt like living through the scene in Orwell’s 1984, in which officials switched directions, mid-speech, declaring that Oceania was at war with Eastasia rather than Eurasia.

To succeed, the United States doesn’t need to adopt China’s means of construction. This book has detailed how the engineering state’s approach has wrought horrors and is no longer fit for purpose even in China. Rather, the United States can look toward other Western countries, like Spain, Germany, and Japan, which strike a better balance between public consultation and environmental review on the one hand and getting stuff built on the other.

To achieve all of this, I propose— very gently— to unwind the dominance of lawyers in the United States. That will require us to confront the proceduralism that exists inside government and broader society. And it will require us to renew our faith in government institutions to deliver essential services.

Beijing has been taking the future dead seriously for the past four decades. That is why China will not outcompete the United States. The engineering state has delivered great things. But the Communist Party is made up of too many leaders who distrust their own people and have little idea how to appeal to the rest of the world. They will continue to bring literal-minded solutions for their problems, attempting to engineer away their challenges, leaving the situation worse than they found it. Beijing will never be able to draw on the best feature of the United States: Embracing pluralism and individual rights. The Communist Party is too afraid of the Chinese people to give them real agency. Beijing will not recognize that the creatives and entrepreneurs it is chasing into exile are not the enemy. It will not accept that their creative energy could bring as much prestige to China as great public works.