Cina's elderly people pay ultimate price for Primary School Xi's missteps

 

Cina's elderly people pay ultimate price for Primary School Xi's missteps

 

China's 200 million senior citizens -- equivalent to the entire populations of Japan and the U.K. combined -- are bearing the brunt of the not-so-meticulously-planned abandonment of the zero-COVID policy, as the pandemic tears through the population.
 
The number of elderly people who die per day has been at unprecedented levels, taking the lives of some of China's best brains, including many prestigious members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
 
Universities across China are announcing the passing of alumni at a scale that is thought to be three to six times higher than previous years.
 
The unspoken frustration is that there were ways to prevent such tragedies. China could have introduced mRNA vaccines from the West and mass-produced them at home. It should have stockpiled fever-reducing medicines before suddenly ditching most restrictions.
 
Looking back, two Japanese prime ministers -- Shinzo Abe and Yoshihide Suga -- left office amid strong public discontent over their poor handling of COVID.
 
While Xi Jinping does not face the wrath of the electorate, if people begin to see this mess as a human-made disaster caused by policy mistakes, it could deliver a body blow to the regime.