However, Omicron is a joke. Yes there will be dead old-weak people but it's not a lie or a western trick that Chinese economy will get into recession if they don't manage to contain shortly and effectively Covid and at the same time make sure Omicron won't make a new wave after a couple of weeks/months(impossible?). The pain on the economy from lockdowns is far far worse than the pain from Omicron. Just look at the Chinese PMIs, crashing hard. (Delta was a completely different beast).
The easiest way out of this is to make vaccination mandatory for people over 75, open the economy, let it spread and then problems are solved. Living in Norway I can assure you that we have no pressure on our hospitals, even though we still have dead old people with Omicron, but really just a few, nothing more than the usual actually if you see the excess deaths statistics. No masks, no measures and the economy is booming! There is no hidden truth and tricks and I really wish all the best for the Chinese people. China is amazing, they manage to mass-test a whole city on a single day, it's really easy for them to vaccinate all these needed and then let is spread.
Btw, European industry is really struggling with high gas prices and costs and now is the time for the Chinese industry to get the whole pie. It's a reality that you order a new Mercedes today and you get it delivered after several months! It would be amazing if Nio, Xpeng, Saic that already are here, could replace all these orders with readily available ones. But I just read that NIO closed it's ONLY factory. I hope you get what I mean.