China is by far the world’s biggest COVID powder keg — and it might be on the verge of exploding.
Not since the earliest days of the pandemic has the most populous country on the planet ever reported more than about 200 coronavirus cases per day — dizzying evidence of the blunt, even brutal, effectiveness of Beijing’s “zero COVID” strategy, which requires strict mass lockdowns at the first flicker of an outbreak.
For most of the last two years, mainland China has averaged fewer than 50 cases per day. According to official numbers, no one — not one of China’s 1.4 billion residents — has died of COVID since May 16,