I
WORLD
t’s early morning on shanghai’s West
Bund, and the lawns of the waterfront area
are filled with picnickers savoring the an-
nual cherry-blossom bloom. Parents push
strollers through carpets of flowers while
students sprawled on the grass share bottles
of chilled cava. After three months of strict
stay-at-home orders because of the COVID-
19 pandemic, residents of China’s biggest city have
re-emerged blinking into the light. “It’s crazy; I’ve
never seen it so busy here,” says Sally Zhou, as she
queues for coffee with her French bulldog. “People
are desperate to get outside and enjoy themselves.”
Even as COVID-19 spreads across the world, no-
where has replicated the scale and intensity of China’s
unprecedented lockdown. The epicenter of the out-
break, Wuhan, was sealed off and other cities placed
under quarantine. The world’s No. 2 economy froze
completely. Those sacrifices have now enabled China
to slow new cases to a trickle. Wuhan discharged
the last of its hospitalized coronavirus patients on
April 27, and although many are skeptical of the gov-
ernment’s reported case numbers, authorities clearly
feel confident enough to allow certain schools and
businesses across China to reopen. Sales at major
online retailers grew around 10% year-on-year in
March, according to China’s Commerce Ministry,
partly in response to a flurry of cut-price deals de-
signed to rekindle demand. On April 22, President Xi
Jinping emphasized the imperative to restart China’s
stalled economy. “Great advances in history have
come after great catastrophes,” he said.
For much of the world, the catastrophe is still
ongoing—at least 3 million cases and more than
200,000 deaths in more than 200 countries and
territories as of late April. In February, the world
marveled as China threw up temporary hospitals in
Wuhan; now, similar facilities sit in London’s largest
convention center and in New York City’s Central
Park. Medical masks, long de rigueur in Asia to guard
against infection, are now worn by most venturing
outside in much of the Western world. The new
hot spots of the virus have armed themselves with
defenses pioneered in Asia: the potent trident of so-
cial distancing, widespread testing and protecting
frontline medical workers.
The coronavirus is far from defeated, but in many
places, the initial surge in cases has abated and focus
has turned to the fate of the global economy. The
IMF estimates global GDP will shrink 3% this year
and that contraction may continue into 2021, which
could lead to the deepest dive since the Great De-
pression. The U.S. economy shrank 4.8% in the first
quarter, and J.P. Morgan predicts a 40% contraction
in the second. The number of Americans claiming
unemployment is now 22 million.
With statistics like these, some feel as if the cure
may hurt more than the disease. Protests have broken
out in the U.S. against lockdown measures, which are
already being rolled back in states including Georgia,
Montana and Tennessee. But health officials warn
that easing measures too quickly risks a W-shaped
recovery, where a resurgence of cases causes a sec-
ond economic decline soon after the first.
There’s no playbook for successfully lifting lock-
down. But several East Asian countries are further
ahead in the game. How they are faring offers invalu-
able lessons in the effort to balance public health and
economic recovery.
It was about 4 p.m. on March 7 when Park Hong-
cheol, 42, received a call from his local health author-
ity in South Korea informing him that a colleague
in his office had tested positive for COVID-19. He
quickly donned a surgical mask and drove to Sejong
City’s Public Health Center. After he filled out
COVID-19
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