Costly ‘U-turn’

Beijing’s abrupt dismantling of zero-Covid controls has been welcomed by economists, even as the country braces itself for the human impact of letting the disease spread through a vulnerable population, media reports said. The leadership’s abrupt U-turn on how it handles the pandemic appears to have been triggered by protests against controls that began last month, a nationwide show of discontent on a scale China had not seen in decades, The Guardian reported.Nearly one in five young people in cities are unemployed. Small and medium businesses have been particularly badly hit by the uncertainty, and the impact of unpredictable and often long-lasting shutdowns of entire cities.But almost no one has been exempt. The founder of Foxconn, a key Apple supplier, had warned Beijing that controls threatened China’s place in the global supply chain, the Wall Street Journal reported.The IMF’s Managing Director, Kristalina Georgieva, welcomed the decisive steps by Chinese authorities in recalibrating Covid policies, and said they could boost the regional international economy.