Xi Jinping dare not climb off the zero-Covid tiger

The Chinese dictator cannot abandon his policy of brutal lockdowns, whatever the cost, lest it undermine his quest for ultimate power

SDystopian repression imposed on millions of hungry and frightened middle-class citizens is becoming intolerable

ince late January 2020, when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) finally admitted that the Covid-19 outbreak had become an epidemic and locked Wuhan down, it has bombarded the world with claims about the success of its draconian containment policy known as zero Covid. These claims have been widely accepted at face value. Not only People’s Republic of China (PRC) officials, but bien-pensant Western commentators decry demands for hard data about the origins of the virus and the realities behind the CCP’s response. The experiences of Chinese citizens have remained largely unheard.

This wall of silence is beginning to crumble. For more than a month the PRC has been hit by wave after wave of omicron outbreaks. It is clear that zero Covid cannot keep more transmissible strains of the virus under control. Public opinion in the widening areas of China once more in the grip of a brutal lockdown has turned against zero Covid – most notably in Shanghai, where 26 million people are now subject to a grimmer lockdown regime than Wuhan endured two years ago.

Xi Jinping continues to force hard lockdowns on to increasingly desperate Chinese citizens in the apparent belief that the health benefits will outweigh the serious economic and social risks. But is this questionable judgement the real reason for his unwillingness to take a different path? It’s worth revisiting the background to Xi’s identification with zero Covid from its inception.

Xi kept a low profile in the early days of Covid-19. But a CCP journal later quoted him describing an extraordinary meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee he summoned on January 7 2020, at which he gave instructions on how to deal with the outbreak. But nothing was done to stop the virus spreading until a fortnight later, by which time millions of Spring Festival travellers had passed into or out of Wuhan, the centre of an epidemic, which then spread across the world.

Yet the CCP claims the January 23 lockdown largely confined Covid within Wuhan and its surrounding Hubei Province. Subsequent outbreaks have mainly been blamed on returning visitors infected overseas. China’s official Covid death toll now stands at 4,638. Around 95 per cent of this strangely low number of deaths reportedly took place in locked-down Wuhan and Hubei in the immediate aftermath of the lockdown. This questionable assertion underlies CCP claims that zero Covid “succeeded”.

Two years on, key engines of the PRC economy are grinding to a halt as cities and regions, which generate a quarter of China’s GDP, go into lockdown. Economic growth is crucial for the otherwise unaccountable regime to maintain social order, but prospects look bleak for the economy meeting even this year’s modest targets. In urban centres, dystopian repression imposed on millions of hungry and frightened middle-class citizens is becoming intolerable. Less is known of conditions in more remote regions, but repressive zeal there tends to be manifested more brutally still.

Xi hopes to extend his tenure as supreme leader of the CCP at its 20th Party Congress later this year. His explicit backing for zero Covid seems to be influenced by his interest in claiming victory over the virus to support his ambitions at home and his struggle with democratic critics abroad. Those who seek to share in his dictatorship will not venture to derail zero Covid now. Nor will Xi tolerate any exposure of its flaws.

Xi seeks to outdo Mao as an undisputed Chinese dictator; as in Mao’s case the greatest risks, if he succeeds, will be to the Chinese people. So far, he seems indifferent to their plight. For the present the Roman tag apparently fits: “Let them hate, as long as they fear.” But a Chinese proverb bears repeating too: “If you ride a tiger, it’s hard to dismount.” Zero Covid is the tiger that Xi dares not climb off.