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.

Engineering only works if it is using good data. But data probity is another of China’s casualties in the aftermath of Covid. The government has had a wobbly commitment to accurate reporting at the best of times. After the pandemic, the government has more regularly succumbed to the temptation not to share bad news.

Xi has talked about achieving national greatness without backing it up with economic growth. The trouble is that when people suffer— as they do through a property collapse, high unemployment, or lockdowns— they start to wonder what they are really getting. It’s certainly not enrichment. When they’re given a cold, hard smack in the face by something that certainly doesn’t feel like greatness, they become unmoored. This sense of alienation has been a big reason to rùn.

Engineers are bad at several things. They’re not very good, for example, at producing appealing cultural products.

During the height of the pandemic, Xi declared that China needs to become more “loveable.” The country’s image had suffered as people around the world blamed China for the spread of the virus.