Canada, Cuba, and China: What Do They Share in Common in Dealing with Covid?
PROTECTING INVESTMENTS, CONTROLLING LABOUR, REASSURING INVESTORS, SAFEGUARDING MARKETS
(This an edited version of a post that first appeared in our Telegram Channel, and it contains some links to specific Telegram posts.)
Previously, when speaking of Canada, I argued that the Canadian federal government’s efforts to ban “unvaccinated” Canadians from escaping the country was a mode of economic stabilization. By that I meant that the prevention of an exodus would help to avoid scaring off current and potential immigrants. This apparent thirst for foreign workers was recently reaffirmed by Quebec, which announced a plan to recruit thousands of workers from diverse countries, to meet a growing labour shortage. The imposition of the federal “vaccine passport” as a requirement for travel, and the deliberate and targeted banning of “unvaccinated” citizens, helps to create the illusion that Canada has a stable population that prefers to remain where it is. A de facto refugee population would spoil that image—even if news spread just by word of mouth alone, this would be a problem especially as some Canadians would flee precisely to those places that generate flows of immigrants to Canada (such as the Caribbean and Central America). The Canadian federal government’s recent relaxation of measures prohibiting Canadians from leaving the country may lead to a serious increase in people leaving—we will need to see figures for the next one to five years at least. No doubt increased numbers will be said to comprise a growing number of retirees seeking sunnier climes, rather than an “exodus”.
Cuba, for its part, has witnessed some of the most strenuous lockdowns of the entire Caribbean region, while also being the sole nation in the region to mandate “vaccination” for its entire population—no questions, no debate allowed, it is compulsory. At stake are the reputations of the vaccines developed by Cuba for Covid-19. The aim would have been to access export markets. The reputation of the Cuban health system is also at stake—one of Cuba's primary earners of foreign exchange comes from the export of doctors on contract to health systems around the world. If Cuba was seen as failing the Covid test, it might harm its foreign markets. Cuba did in fact fail, when compared with Haiti just to the east: Haiti had no lockdowns, negligible “vaccination,” hardly any “protocols” observed, and just a tiny fraction of the sickness and death that visited Cuba.
China—especially when we look at the recent, months-long Shanghai lockdown—has been the subject of diverse interpretations that seek to explain the motive(s) for its exceptionally severe lockdowns. One of the explanations that has been largely missing, if not entirely missing, is that of labour control and reassuring foreign investors. China needs to show that it can conquer such illnesses, especially as China has been the source of several outbreaks over the past 20 years alone. If China looks like a place of uncontrolled contagion, then that sends a bad signal of risk to investors. Sickness affects labour productivity, and potentially even the reproduction of labour. Worse yet, if China cannot control its population, and thus its workforce, that is another bad sign. China's leadership needs to show it can command the population to do just about anything. Keep in mind that China is all too aware that competitors are preparing to take its place: India, Vietnam, and others.
This is just a sketch of an analysis. It was prompted by my interests in political economy, and by my attraction to issues of capital transfer, from the international to the interpersonal level. Likewise, as almost all readers are abundantly aware by now, pharmaceutical companies are interested in exploiting illness, not curing it.