“The worse, the better,” former Russian leader Vladimir Lenin is reputed to have said, arguing that crises create the conditions for change. In China, the govern-ment’s zealous pursuit of zero Covid has sparked widespread public anger-but opening up remains fraught with challenges. China’s economy has slowed sharply this year, largely because of Beijing’s willingness to sacrifce growth in order to eradicate the virus, making the future of the government’s zero-Covid policy a signifcant factor for the world economy and commodity demand. The country is the world’s leading importer of oil and LNG. Chinese GDP will grow at just 3.2pc this year, consultancy Oxford Economics estimates, the slowest rate since the late 1990s.
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