China's New Lockdowns Worsen Supply Chain Issues

China’s perpetual lockdown of major port city Shanghai brings supply chain to brink of collapse, but that may be the plan

JD Heyes

Under the guise of a supposed “zero COVID” policy, the Chinese Communist government has once again locked down the major port city of Shanghai at a time when the world’s supply chain crisis is at a peak, leading many to believe that Beijing seeks to collapse it for tactical advantage before invading Taiwan.

According to a piece published on the Quoth The Raven Substack page, the perpetual lockdown of the strategically important port to the point of starving citizens who live there and risking major unrest and destabilizing riots is likely purposeful.

“Growing lockdowns in China have me believing more and more that the country isn’t exactly crestfallen about the supply chain crisis it is creating for the rest of the world,” the writer says.

“Days ago, I wrote about suspicions I had about China’s latest round of Covid lockdowns. In that piece, I drew the conclusion that the country’s ‘Covid Zero’ plan is irrational and egregious, and that China’s lockdowns may have to do with something more than Covid,” the writer continued, laying out three potential scenarios for “overshooting the mark” with the enduring lockdowns:

1. The CCP may be trying to usurp more power
2. There may be something about Covid that China knows that the rest of the world still doesn’t know
3. China is looking for an excuse to slow its production to put pressure on the Western world at a time when it is trying to separate further, economically, from the West

The writer then said No. 3 is the more likely scenario, noting that just days ago, China began expanding the mandatory lockdowns across a wider swath of the country. In addition, the column notes that China’s top oil and gas producer — remember, no business or industry in that country is without ties to the ChiCom government — has also made the decision to stop doing business with most Western nations but especially the U.S., Canada and Britain.

Taken collectively, it’s obvious that China is increasing the intensity of lockdowns around the country — which is the same type of actions the government took during 2020 that created the supply chain crisis in the first place (remember stores running short of things like toilet paper for months?).

This is before much of the world has failed to fully recover from those initial shortages, which means the current supply chain crunch is only going to get worse, and yes, that’s very possible.

More...