Tsinghua professor calls China’s two years of protest a victory

The “2022 Tsinghua PBCSF Chief Economist Forum” kicked off on May 14. Lu Ting, an economist at Nomura Securities, said China’s economy faces internal risks as well as external uncertainties. However, Li Daokui, the Professor of Friedman Economics at Tsinghua University, described China’s two-year fight as a “victory” at the conference. He also shared his understanding that “people come first, life comes first.”

China insists on dynamic zero-out. Shanghai was the first city to announce that the 4-day lockdown had been extended to more than 40 days.

Li Daokui further explained that people and life come first, “a very good measure is the average life expectancy”, “one of the fundamental purposes of economic development is to improve the average life expectancy of ordinary people”. He said that by his calculation, China’s two-year fight against the virus has saved 4 million Chinese lives.

Then, he added, “the last two years have been a success in terms of life expectancy.” According to his calculations, “for every life lost, the equivalent of an additional 10 days of life is gained for each person.”

In short: “The great victories of the past two years have increased the average life expectancy of every citizen by ten days, or five days per year”.

Li Daokui’s comments sparked a backlash online. Some people questioned how Professor Li’s ten-day life span was calculated, “He may not have entered the cabin”, and some people criticized: “I think his calculation and conclusion are equivalent to ghost painting, jumping rope”. Rong Jian, a Beijing-based scholar, said: “I have told Professor Li that keeping him in jail for one year will increase his life expectancy by 60 days.”

Yi Fuxian, a demographer, tweeted, “Li Daokui, who proved that China’s economy will be three times that of the U.S. in 2049, is now talking again. What he doesn’t know is that China has lost millions of new lives, with an average life expectancy of 78 years and 78 million lives, affecting the economy for decades to come. He also said, If you are banned for two years, you can live 10 days longer, and if you are banned for life (70 years), you can live one year longer. Animals in captivity in zoos also live longer than wild animals.”

Another netizen said that it is too rough to say that a person who has only extended his life by 10 days is a “victory”. Even if my life has been extended by 10 days, will that be enough time for us to queue up for nucleic acid and concentrate and be isolated?

Li Daokui also talked about how to “safeguard the economy”, which is also related to life he mentioned earlier. He said, “you can’t see only keep today’s life, but also protect the future health, life, so must keep” industrial chain, but so hard reset measures, people have been quarantined, how to keep the industrial chain, professor lee suggested that the front-line workers “together to build houses, next to the plant isolation, isolation and production”.

As a result, netizens criticized him and encouraged the construction of concentration camps. Cicero from the seaside commented, “This way, we can not only catch the epidemic prevention, but also promote production. We are sure to win. This plan is called centralized winning.”