China has recently experienced its largest and most politically charged protests since the pro-democracy movement in 1989 ended in a massacre by government forces in Tiananmen Square.
The recent social eruption should come as no surprise; Frustrations over the Chinese government’s rigid zero-covid policy have been brewing for a long time. However, the ruling Communist Party of China (CCP) apparently did not see the protests coming, despite operating a pervasive and deeply intrusive surveillance apparatus.
Now, the central government has announced that it will accelerate the move away from zero-Covid with a broad easing of restrictions. After publishing a set of 20 guidelines for officials to follow last month, he has now whittled the list down to 10.
In the face of the protests, the government of President Xi Jinping avoided a brutal crackdown on the Tiananmen-style demonstrations. While large numbers of police have been deployed to protest sites, they have eschewed bloody “crowd control” tactics and mass arrests, preferring to identify and intimidate protesters using cellphone tracking technology.
But CCP leaders also warned that a “resolute crackdown” was coming. According to Chen Wenqing, the CCP’s new head of national security, the authorities will focus on “infiltration and sabotage activities by hostile forces” and “illegal and criminal acts that disturb social order.”
While China’s government has sent a relatively clear message about the fate of the protests, its stance on covid zero has been confused and inconsistent, with restrictions being eased only in a few cities, including Guangzhou, Hangzhou and Shanghai. In recent days, the phrase “dynamic zero covid” (dongtai qingling) seemed to disappear from state media.
Still, uncertainty reigned, because no senior Chinese official had publicly stated that the zero-tolerance approach was being abandoned entirely. Instead, Vice Premier Sun Chunlan, who oversees the pandemic response, acknowledged the “decreasing severity of the Omicron variant” and said the fight against Covid-19 was entering a “new phase.”
With little direction from the top, local governments have been adopting very different policies. For example, although the Shanghai municipal government announced an easing of some rules (as of December 5, a negative covid test was no longer required to take public transport or visit parks), it closed the recently reopened Disneyland again.
The Chinese leadership’s refusal to take a clear stance on Covid-0 is pure politics. The central government has been reluctant to take responsibility for the decision, because policymakers do not want to be blamed for the surge in infections, hospitalizations and deaths that follows the reopening. The new guidelines may be more flexible than the old ones, but they don’t necessarily represent the end of zero-Covid.
In addition, local officials have also been playing politics. If they have been relaxing pandemic restrictions, it is because they believe doing so will serve their interests well enough to justify the risk to public health.
If they have stuck to more severe restrictions, it reflects their calculation that the immediate hit to their popularity would be dwarfed by the shock of becoming the scapegoat for any wave of cases.
But perhaps the clearest and most worrying evidence of the politicization of public health decisions is the Chinese authorities’ refusal to approve the most effective mRNA vaccines produced by Western companies. Although these vaccines would help make the zero-Covid exit safer, especially for the elderly who are currently unvaccinated, China’s leaders apparently view the use of Western vaccines as a blow to national pride and an admission of past mistakes.
Looking ahead, China’s leaders can probably count on security forces to quell further protests, allowing the CCP to reassert control and minimize public frustrations. But a reluctance to devise a comprehensive and systematic exit strategy, and to take responsibility for its results, could leave China experiencing the worst of both worlds.
If there is still confusion about Xi’s commitment to zero-Covid and the central government’s reopening plans, that will produce a chaotic response at the local level, and the continued enforcement of ever-changing pandemic restrictions will test care and resources. of the state while stoking popular frustration. .
At the same time, a loosening of restrictions that is not accompanied by effective public health measures, such as a rapid mass immunization campaign with Western vaccines, will cause infection rates to skyrocket, overwhelming China’s healthcare system.
Xi must act quickly to prevent this outcome, notably by ordering the immediate approval and import of mRNA vaccines. Such a move would demonstrate not only political courage but also political intelligence because it would go a long way toward repairing the damage done to Xi’s image by the anti-lockdown protests that rocked his government in late November. — © Project Syndicate
Minxin Pei, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, is a non-resident senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
