Despite the rigidity of the Chinese Communist party’s politics and grip on power, it can sometimes change course at a startling pace. The most obvious was its economic turn from Mao to market. More recently, it flipped from its one-child policy of limiting births to actively trying to boost them.
But the turnaround on its zero-Covid policy is truly astonishing in its speed. In mid-October, Beijing was still boasting of an “all-out war” on Covid-19, despite its evident unsustainability and punitive economic effects. Two weeks ago, the foreign ministry’s spokesperson tweeted scathingly of 1m Covid deaths as part of “The price of ‘freedom’ in the US … What we want is to protect our people’s lives.”
Now the government has cast off controls in a matter of days. Quarantine rules and travel restrictions have been significantly relaxed; the government has scrapped its primary Covid tracking app. Experts warn that hospitals could be rapidly overwhelmed; one analysis suggests that up to 2.1 million lives could be at risk. Testing booths are being dismantled, but Beijing authorities said fever clinics in the city received 16 times more patients on Sunday than the week before.
An end to zero Covid was long overdue. Other countries have successfully exited similarly tight restrictions through vaccination and the gradual relaxation of measures. But the lack of preparation, the timing of this volte-face – at the height of winter – and the scrapping of most (though not all) mitigation measures all exacerbate the risks. Older people in particular are undervaccinated, and China still depends on less effective domestic vaccines that were designed to counter the original strain.
The extraordinary anti-zero-Covid protests that broke out last month have clearly played a part in this decision. But economic factors may well have been more decisive. Foxconn’s founder petitioned the authorities to ease up around a month ago, warning that China’s position in global supply chains was under threat. October’s party congress, cementing Xi Jinping’s position as China’s most powerful leader since Mao, is safely out of the way.
Relaxation also poses political risks, despite the understandable unpopularity of zero Covid in cities. The countryside was relatively unaffected by restrictions; it is also much worse served by healthcare, and therefore worse equipped to handle a surge in cases. We are likely to hear far less about sickness and deaths there, and some wonder if many Covid deaths will be ascribed to other causes. But while the party-state is expert in altering the narrative, it is hard to do so overnight. Having hammered home the message that much of the world had been callously abandoned by its leaders to a deadly illness, officials now suddenly portray Covid as little worse than a bad cold. State media has switched from highlighting the toll of long Covid to announcing that the chances of getting it are “very low”, and even quoting a doctor questioning its very existence.
Had China poured a fraction of the effort and resources devoted to testing and lockdowns into vaccination and planning the end of zero Covid, it would now be in a much better place. This reversal is necessary, but should not be viewed as proof of an effective self-correction mechanism – particularly when protesters are paying the price for their defiance. Rather, it is evidence of the failures of a system that rarely listens to its citizens and is increasingly subject to the decisions of one man.
