China’s zero-COVID-19 policy pits it against the rest of the world. Thanks to effective vaccines and herd immunity outside China, the virus is becoming endemic in the rest of the world.

Since COVID-19 will always exist abroad and be able to spread to China, China can never relax its zero-COVID policy of rolling lockdowns and quarantining at border entry. That means business and leisure travel to and from China will be restrained forever. It also means reduced Spring Festival mass migration, forbidden for employees of government and state-owned enterprises, discouraged among migrant workers, and risky for everybody else who could get locked down somewhere remote.