As the lockdown of Shanghai and outbreaks in Beijing and elsewhere batter the economy, China’s leader keeps a distance from the politically charged issue.
China’s leader, Xi Jinping, waved at crowds of giddily cheering students. He held meetings with Olympic Games officials, economic policymakers and European leaders. He toured a tropical island. But there was a revealing gap in Mr. Xi’s busy itinerary last month, exposing the predicament that Covid is creating in a politically crucial year when he hopes to extend his hold on power. He stayed behind the scenes when it came to China’s biggest, most contentious lockdown since the pandemic began. Throughout April, Mr. Xi gave no public speeches focused on outbreaks in China as its biggest city, Shanghai, shut down to try to stifle infections, and then Beijing went on alert after a burst of cases. Nor did Mr. Xi directly address the 25 million residents of Shanghai who have been ordered to stay at home for weeks, despite their complaints of scarce food, overwhelmed hospitals and confusing zigzags in mass quarantine rules. “He wants to deliberately keep a certain distance in from Shanghai,” said Deng Yuwen, a former editor of a Communist Party newspaper who now lives in the United States. “No doubt, he’s doing a lot about fighting the pandemic behind the scenes, but of course he does not want to be directly drawn into the mess in Shanghai.” Mr. Xi’s orders have instead been passed through subordinates or meeting summaries. They have cited his demand to stick to a “dynamic zero Covid” goal: essentially ensuring no cases in a population of 1.4 billion by strict mass testing and isolation of infections or close contacts. On Friday, the Communist Party Politburo — a council of 25 leaders, including Mr. Xi — renewed its commitment to that goal, noting the rising economic risks from Covid and the war in Ukraine. The outbreaks in Shanghai, Beijing and other cities are testing Mr. Xi’s acumen and authority before an important Communist Party congress late this year. While he is nearly certain to win a groundbreaking third term as party general secretary, Mr. Xi also wants to ensure the leadership is dominated by officials who will defend him and enforce his agenda. To secure that outcome, Mr. Xi wants to demonstrate serene political mastery, and until lately, the zero-Covid strategy has been a signature achievement: an effective, if expensive, and generally popular vow that China would avoid mass sickness and deaths. After Communist Party officials initially downplayed the virus in early 2020, Mr. Xi built China into an epidemiological fortress, stifling infections and protecting the economy while the United States suffered nearly one million Covid deaths. Now there is no easy way out of that fortress. Mr. Xi’s leadership has been so invested in showing that China could handle its own pandemic needs that the government held off from introducing mRNA vaccines developed abroad, which are generally more effective than China’s homegrown vaccines. China’s vaccination of the aged has also lagged. Without the necessary defenses, the country could face surging cases that, even with Omicron’s lower virulence, officials warn could overwhelm hospitals.
