Three years under the Chinese Communist Party’s zero-COVID policy is a disaster to local finances.
Southern China’s Guangdong Province directly spent $22 billion on the central government’s COVID containment measures, such as mass testing and forced vaccination, over the last three years.
Guangdong, China’s economic powerhouse, spent a total of 146.8 billion yuan ($21.65 billion) on epidemic prevention in the past three years, according to its 2022 budget report released on Jan. 12.
From 2020 to 2022, the epidemic prevention and control campaign costs were 30.278 billion ($4.47 billion), 45.376 billion ($6.69 billion), and 71.139 billion ($10.49 billion) respectively, increasing by about 50 percent year by year, Chinese media Caixin reported….