Covid policy; 20th Party Congress; New podcasts; Sinocism Chat

I hope you are having a nice weekend!

I do not usually publish on Saturdays but I wanted to share two new podcasts and briefly discuss today’s State Council news conference about Covid policies. The short answer is they announced no meaningful changes, so markets might be a little sad Monday. From Bloomberg - China to ‘Unswervingly’ Keep to Covid Zero Policy, Dashing Hopes:

China will “unswervingly” adhere to its current Covid controls as the country faces an increasingly serious outbreaks, health officials said, damping hopes that Beijing will ease its stringent policies that have put cities and factories under prolonged lockdowns.

“Previous practices have proved that our prevention and control plans and a series of strategic measures are completely correct,” Hu Xiang, an official at National Health Commission’s disease prevention and control bureau, said at a briefing Saturday.  “The policies are also the most economical and effective.”

On Thursday I recorded a new episode of the very occasional Sinocism podcast to talk about the 20th Party Congress, Xi Jinping and US-China relations with Chris Johnson. This Party Congress is the 7th one that Chris has analyzed professionally, so it was a very interesting discussion. It is outside the paywall, you can listen to it by clicking on the blurb below, if you have not already added it to your podcast player:

Sinocism Podcast #5: 20th Party Congress and US-China Relations with Chris Johnson

The third episode of the weekly Sharp China podcast I do with Andrew Sharp dropped on Friday. We discuss dynamic zero-Covid, why any near-term relaxations are unlikely, and we talk about the story last week about Covid origins and the guy with the magic Party-speak decoder ring. Sharp China is usually available only to paying subscribers of Stratechery and Sinocism, but we put this episode outside the paywall. You can listen to it by clicking on the blurb below, if you have not already added it to your podcast player:

The State of Dynamic Zero-COVID and Reactions to that ProPublica Report

I also encourage you to check out the Sinocism chat in the Substack app. Some of the threads are for paying subscribers only, but some are open to free readers as well. I am spending more time in there and less on Twitter, and as an early user and angel investor in Substack I get to test some of the new features still in development and I think it is only going to get much more interesting and useful, especially as Twitter seems to be fracturing under its new management. You can access the Sinocism chat here if this QR code does not work for you:

Thanks.