While China has become significantly more restrictive under President Xi Jinping and one civil rights activist after another has been jailed: the Communist Party leader was popular with the people. He enjoyed great support, above all for his fight against corruption, but also for his claim to transform China into the dominant world power. But what’s the point of it now that people across the country are protesting the Covid-zero strategy in the streets? Against a policy inseparable from Xi Jinping?
For the first time since 1989, people in more than a dozen cities and across all walks of life took to the streets this week for a common cause. China’s leadership has responded by deploying police units in sensitive locations in Beijing, Guangzhou and other megacities. Shanghai’s Urumqi Street, where protesters were demanding the resignation of party leader Xi, is blocked off with barricades. All traces of the “Din-A4 Revolution”, whose symbol is a white sheet of paper, are being erased from the Internet.
Xi has made his Covid-zero strategy a matter of loyalty
The government acts as a deterrent, but the imposed calm cannot hide the great discontent of the people. For three years, Xi has presented himself as the architect of the Covid-zero strategy. As the strict measures initially effectively prevented infections, China’s leadership presented them as proof that its socialist system was superior to democracies. Xi has repeatedly called for compliance with the measures, even when there was an alternative to isolation with vaccines. The president has made his zero Covid strategy a matter of loyalty.
It is now clear that the centralization of virus control that has characterized Xi’s authoritarian leadership since 2012 was a serious political mistake. It prevented local authorities and health authorities from adopting flexible measures. For political reasons, Beijing has also not allowed mRNA vaccines or vectors from abroad, although they are considered more effective than Chinese vaccines.
The government preferred to rely on mass testing and forced quarantine. Even Chinese experts have warned for years that the vaccination rate among the elderly is too low. The unprotected elderly are the reason Beijing may now decide to relax quarantine rules, but not immediately.
Even though a course change must be communicated carefully, it cannot be ruled out. Chinese party leaders have repeatedly proven that they are capable of great pragmatism in crises. But Xi Jinping is now under enormous personal pressure, for the first time he cannot blame anyone. And there are long signs that his support in the party is not unlimited. At the party congress, the body failed to incorporate Xi’s main political concepts into the party constitution. As Nikkei Asia magazine noted, he hasn’t been called a “people’s leader” for some time. At the National People’s Congress next March, the party leader may be forced to make further concessions.
Chinese dissatisfaction runs much deeper
Beijing knows that the dissatisfaction of many Chinese goes far beyond the Covid strategy. The CP bases its claim to power on expectations, held for decades, that China will become increasingly wealthy and that the standard of living for all Chinese will rise. But that lucky formula seems to have run out.
The country is facing problems familiar to other, more developed economies: wages are stagnant, especially in the lowest salary brackets. Inequality increases, social mobility decreases. Much of the workforce of 800 million is underskilled. At the same time, the population is aging faster than expected. To resolve the underlying social and economic dilemmas, Xi would have to initiate fundamental reforms. The opposite is the case. He swears by an economy with strong state control and leaves important reforms untouched.
It remains to be seen to what extent the protests will turn against the political system. The security apparatus must prevent an immediate danger to the party. But in addition to Xi’s popularity, confidence in the core instruments of communist governance has also been shaken.
In the “popular struggle” against the virus, the party had an army of corona guards – simple security guards, party representatives and volunteers from neighborhood commissions, who also served as the most important instrument of social control before the pandemic. But the longer the measures lasted, the more violent the helpers in white protective suits had to use. Collective excesses are reminiscent of the dark chapters of Mao, who used brute force to mobilize the masses for his political goals. Exhausted and overwhelmed, China’s “white guards” have become a symbol of state failure.