The downside of tight, centralised control

In the past two years, China has gradually built up confidence in its ability to lock down cities, mass test millions of people quickly and keep track of every individual in its fight against Covid-19.

It’s a formula it applied to the rest of the country after successfully containing the Wuhan outbreak by locking down the city, and later the rest of Hubei province, for more than two months in 2020.

Throughout 2020 and 2022, one city after another was locked down as authorities used a whack-a-mole approach to contain the virus.

China can mobilise all its resources for a single political or policy goal – something that no other country can do.

It is enabled by a rigid social control system. The country’s neighbourhood committee system oversees every street and residential complex. The decades-old structure was pivotal during compulsory mass testing, compelling people to stay home and aiding the delivery of food to residents.

Technology, such as health code apps and big data via mobile signals, means the authorities can track and restrict the movement of every individual.

China, confident in its ability to follow through, has imposed lockdowns in many cities in recent months as it struggled to do battle with Omicron. However, high transmissibility means that strain of the coronavirus requires a different playbook.

Food shortages in Shanghai hit the headlines because of the unexpectedly long lockdown, and also because shutting down an international metropolis captures attention around the world.

A censored article “The places where they have no voice” on social media called for greater attention on other locked down places that had been ignored by the outside world, including Jilin province and border cities such as Ruili in Yunnan province, Dongxing in Guangxi and Suifenhe in Heilongjiang.

The danger with the capacity to impose restrictions is the growing obsession with centralisation and control. But the policy may fail – centralising food distribution in Shanghai turned out to be a humanitarian crisis unthinkable for such a wealthy city.

History is littered with tragedies caused by excessive centralisation and since China learned those painful lessons it has adopted a pragmatic approach to allow a market economy.

But instead of resorting to centralisation and control every time it has a problem, China should rely on more diverse solutions, such as giving resources to its people or strengthening facilities.