Duncan Clark’s flight was rolling down the Paris runway in late October when President Emmanuel Macron announced a second national blockade in France. The country had almost 50,000 new Covid-19 infections that day. The United States had almost 100,000.
He sighed with relief. He was going to China. That day, he had reported 25 new infections, all but one originating abroad.
Mr. Clark, a businessman and writer, returned to China after spending nine months in the United States and France, his longest period abroad since moving to Beijing in 1994. He had spent more time outside China in the past a few years to escape air pollution, internet censorship and an increasingly depressing political environment.
But when he returned in October, he felt something new: safe, energized and free.
“The ability to just live a normal life is incredible,” he said.
While many countries are still recovering from Covid-19, China – where the pandemic originated – has become one of the safest places in the world. The country reported less than 100,000 infections in the entire year 2020. The United States has reported more than that every day since the beginning of November.
China looks like what was “normal” in the pre-pandemic world. The restaurants are packed. The hotels are full. Long lines form outside luxury brand stores. Instead of calls from Zoom, people come face to face to talk business or celebrate the new year.
The country will be the only major economy to grow last year. While these predictions are often more art than science, one company predicts that the Chinese economy will overtake that of the United States in 2028 – five years ahead of schedule.
The pandemic has altered many perceptions, including ideas about freedom. China’s citizens have no freedom of speech, freedom of worship or freedom from fear – three of the four freedoms articulated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt – but they have the freedom to move about and lead a normal day-to-day life. In a year of pandemic, many people in the world would envy this most basic form of freedom.
The global crisis may cast doubt on other types of freedom. Nearly half of American voters supported a president who ignored science and failed to take basic precautions to protect his country. Some Americans claim that it is their individual right to ignore the recommendations of health experts to wear masks, putting themselves and others at increased risk of infection. The internet, which should give a voice to those who have no voice, has become a useful tool for autocrats to control the masses and for political groups to spread disinformation.
China’s freedom of movement comes at the expense of almost all other types. The country is one of the most watched in the world. The government took extreme social control measures at the start of the outbreak to keep people separate – approaches that are beyond the reach of democratic governments.
“In fact, there are many parallels between how the Chinese government treats a virus and how it treats other problems,” said Howard Chao, a retired California lawyer who invests in start-ups on both sides of the Pacific.
“It’s a one-size-fits-all approach: just take care of the problem completely,” he said. “So when it comes to a virus, it might not be such a bad thing. When it comes to other problems, it may not be such a good thing. “
This realization did not stop Mr. Chao from enjoying his time in China. Since flying from San Francisco to Shanghai in mid-October, he has organized business dinners attended by up to 20 people, went to a jazz bar, saw a movie, visited a seafood market and flew to Shenzhen, in southern China, to check the departure of an autonomous car
“This is where I had lunch in Shanghai today,” he wrote on Facebook on November 6, next to a photo of people having dinner. “Starting to remember what normal life is like.”
Chao said the people he met in China were “perplexed” and “incredulous” at the high rate of daily infections in the United States. “They rolled their eyes and asked, ‘How was that possible?'” He said.
Of course, the Chinese government is eager to help the world forget that it has silenced those who tried to alert the world in the early days of the outbreak.
But there is no denying that China’s success in containing the outbreak has polished Beijing’s image, especially when compared to the failure of the United States. He gave currency to the so-called China model – the Communist Party’s promise to the Chinese public that it will provide prosperity and stability in exchange for its relentless control of political power.
“In this year of a pandemic, the Communist Party has provided the public with a social good: stability,” said Dong Haitao, an investor who moved from Hong Kong to Beijing in August.
For Mr. Dong, China’s success gives him the opportunity to achieve financial independence.
Mr. Dong, who is starting an asset management company and also a pu’er tea start-up, is optimistic about the Chinese economy. He believes that after the pandemic, China will have even stronger supply chains and a vibrant consumer economy driven by a young generation that is more interested in China’s traditional culture, such as tea, than its generation, who grew up in era of globalization.
Dong, who moved from New York to Hong Kong in the middle of the 2008 financial crisis, decided to leave Hong Kong because the city was anemic during the pandemic, while many cities on the continent seem to shine with energy and hope.
“I don’t think I can find the kind of freedom I want in Hong Kong,” he said.
It is not clear whether this shift in perception can be sustained after the end of the pandemic. But the West may feel it needs to work harder to sell its vision of freedom after China has made its model so attractive.
Mr. Clark, a businessman and author, founded a technology consulting firm in Beijing in 1994 and was a consultant to Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, in the company’s early days. Since leaving quarantine in mid-November, he has traveled to four cities and participated in many events and conferences, including one with about 900 people.
“Normally, China was a kind of adventure,” he said. “But that has changed. Something has changed in the world. “
Mr. Clark said he did the recognition with mixed feelings. “You kind of want it not to be true,” he said, “but it’s kind of true.”
Beijing and Shanghai are increasingly cosmopolitan and their consumers increasingly sophisticated, he said. This month, he attended a Scottish ball in Beijing. The bagpiper was Chinese because the organizer could not fly anyone in Scotland.
China “looks a bit like Disney’s Epcot Center,” he said. “It’s like the microcosm of the West is still here, but the West is closed at the moment.”
For Mr. Clark, being in a crowd again took a little getting used to. “If you’re talking to people at a party or something, you can’t just silence someone if it’s annoying,” he said. At the first big event he attended, he said, he realized that someone was having very bad breath.
“I think, oh my God, I didn’t have to go through this for nine months because everyone was wearing masks and you didn’t see anyone,” said Clark.
“I feel like I’m living in the future here,” even when he thinks about bad breath, he said. “I mean, it’s like, ‘Get ready’.”