Pandemic pain: China’s struggle with Covid is just beginning

China’s leaders are in a dangerous dilemma. Their obsession with eliminating the coronavirus has spared the country the pandemic death rates suffered by other major countries, but at a steep cost: severe social and economic pain that led last weekend to China’s biggest anti-government protests in decades. The harsh zero-tolerance Covid policy championed by President Xi Jinping is no longer sustainable, and he faces a difficult choice between easing up on Covid restrictions, which could cause mass deaths, or clinging to an unpopular approach that is pushing Chinese society to a breaking point.
The government, apparently spooked by the rare demonstrations that took place in several cities, may be losing its resolve. A few days after the protests, Vice Premier Sun Chunlan, China’s Covid czar, appeared to sound the death knell for the zero-Covid approach, indicating on Wednesday that a new strategy was imminent. As if on cue, some major cities began ditching key pandemic measures. More are expected to follow suit. But extricating China from this health policy quagmire is fraught with peril. The government’s uncompromising approach seemed to work at first. Shortly after the virus began emerging from Wuhan in late 2019, China brought it under control with tough lockdowns as it spread globally. Stung by accusations from the likes of President Donald Trump that China had unleashed the pandemic on the world, and eager to prevent the virus from re-emerging, the Chinese Communist Party doubled down. It poured colossal resources into testing, developing a vast high-tech tracing and quarantine infrastructure and locking down entire cities. Small outbreaks were quickly stamped out and infection rates kept extremely low. From the outset, Xi tied himself to zero-Covid’s success, holding it up as proof of the authoritarian Chinese system’s superiority. As recently as October he framed it as an “all-out people’s war.” Questioning an all-powerful leader was politically taboo, especially in the buildup to the Communist Party Congress in October, where Xi secured a third term. As a result, no serious attempt was made to prepare a road map for transitioning out of zero-Covid. Containing Covid has relied heavily on the Chinese public buying into the official narrative, but as the demonstrations have shown, popular support is quickly dissipating as patience wears thin.
But as highly transmissible and difficult-to-contain variants like Delta and Omicron emerged, China had no exit ramp. The severe strain that the pandemic imposed on the American healthcare system was not lost on leaders in Beijing, who are well aware of the weaknesses of their own underfunded and ill-equipped health care infrastructure and an aging Chinese population.
But walling China’s people off from the virus only increases their vulnerability, inhibiting the immunity that comes with exposure. A vaccination drive was launched in late 2020, but Chinese vaccines have relatively low efficacy, especially against variants like Omicron, and Beijing is yet to allow the import of foreign vaccines. At the same time, low infection numbers create a false sense of security, providing little incentive to get jabbed: Nine out of 10 Chinese have been vaccinated, but less than half of people aged 80 and over have gotten a booster, leaving millions of elderly under-vaccinated.
Chinese policy created a feedback loop: suppression of the virus reduced the impetus for the elderly to get vaccinated, which kept immunity low, further necessitating the no-tolerance approach.
From the outset, Xi tied himself to zero-Covid’s success, holding it up as proof of the authoritarian Chinese system’s superiority. As recently as October he framed it as an “all-out people’s war.” Questioning an all-powerful leader was politically taboo, especially in the buildup to the Communist Party Congress in October, where Xi secured a third term. As a result, no serious attempt was made to prepare a road map for transitioning out of zero-Covid. Containing Covid has relied heavily on the Chinese public buying into the official narrative, but as the demonstrations have shown, popular support is quickly dissipating as patience wears thin.