(Minghui.org) A friend of mine is a government official in Haizhu District, Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province. In the past week, Guangdong became the first province in the country to suddenly relax the COVID prevention rules. According to my friend, this was done because the government could no longer bear the financial cost of the zero-Covid policy and they are already heavily indebted.

For example, the hotels that were used as quarantine centers had begun to evict the people there, as the government couldn’t pay the hotels for providing room and board.

As an alternative, the authorities turned to schools, only to receive mounting complaints from parents. Unable to pay for the pandemic workers, the authorities had to mobilize teachers to work as volunteers. With the shortage of teachers, the schools had to arrange the students from different classes to attend virtual lectures together.

The government mobilized the teachers because they were one of the few remaining professions that were still receiving regular paychecks, whereas other agencies couldn’t even afford to pay their employees.

As the government had trouble paying COVID testing companies, the companies in turn struggled to pay their workers, causing many of them to quit. If the strict measures were to continue, the annual GDP of Guangzhou would be only 2% and would likely trigger an even more severe financial crisis.

Due to the strict pandemic measures, the small businesses that accounted for the majority of economic growth in Guangzhou have suffered significantly. If more companies went out of business, many people would lose their jobs, rendering them unable to pay their home and car loans. When people’s livelihoods are jeopardized, social upheaval may follow.

The same is true in other regions of the country. When the government could no longer afford to pay people to work for them, who would still collect information about COVID patients or make arrangement for the quarantine?

My friend added that the economy of Guangdong Province was just too important for the central government and that it contributed 40% of the social security special funding that the central government collected from all provinces. The special funding is usually used to subsidize poorly-performing provinces in their social security programs. If Guangzhou couldn’t make the same contribution to the special fund, some retirees in other parts of the country would no longer be able to receive their pensions, which may bring about more stability concerns for the Chinese Communist Party.