Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Sunday dashed any hopes that the “zero Covid” policy — which attempts to eliminate coronavirus infections with costly lockdowns — would end in the coming months.
Mr. Xi argued that the Communist Party had waged an “all out people’s war to stop the spread of the virus.” China’s leadership had done everything it could to protect people’s health, he said, putting “the people and their lives above all else.” He made no mention of how the stringent measures are holding back economic growth and frustrating residents.
Mr. Xi emphasized that “zero Covid” has saved lives. To abandon it, he seemed to suggest, would be to disregard human life.
The message — delivered by Mr. Xi at the party congress — reinforced a flurry of recent propaganda published by state media earlier this week to counter mounting speculation that China might loosen its tough pandemic restrictions after the gathering.
To the rest of the world, where more effective vaccines and treatment have lessened the death toll from Covid-19, China’s approach no longer makes sense.
But China is still trying to contain the virus even as it becomes increasingly hard to do, guided by a prevailing thought that loosening up would be too dangerous for vulnerable citizens like the elderly and would overwhelm its fragile hospital system.
Mr. Xi on Sunday also repeated a common refrain that China has won international acclaim for its go-it-alone approach to Covid, bolstering its influence on the international stage.
This claim was true early on in the pandemic, when China was lauded for using widespread lockdowns to stop the spread of the virus, said Yanzhong Huang, a global health expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. By 2021 the city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the new coronavirus just a year earlier, offered the rest of the world a glimpse of a post-pandemic world as residents went on with their lives while other countries were battling devastating outbreaks.
But as a more infectious Omicron variant broke through China’s zero Covid fortress earlier this year, officials have had to enforce increasingly stringent measures to fulfill its ongoing goal to keeping the virus out. The approach has left China isolated from the world and taken a grim toll on its economy.
“International reverence for Beijing’s Covid response approach has rapidly and significantly decreased, which has undermined China’s soft power, especially in the Western world,” said Mr. Huang.
There is also growing evidence at home that people’s patience for China’s approach to fighting Covid is waning. A nationwide mass testing requirement that was supposed to ease the pressure is not working as officials have rushed to lock down more and more cities.
Beyond the economy, experts have questioned how Mr. Xi will pivot away from a policy that has dominated the lives of 1.4 billion people for nearly three years.
“There is nothing positive or aspirational about zero Covid,” said Jude Blanchette, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Instead, it’s a sword of Damocles that hangs over everyone’s head, Mr. Blanchette said, adding, “you know you’re just a few cases away from a lockdown.”
