It will have been enough for China to abandon its zero-Covid policy and for the virus to spread across the country at full speed for some westerners to predict the fall of Xi Jinping or even the Chinese Communist Party. “China stands on the brink of a great tragedy. It could break the implicit contract between the Communist Party and the Chinese: you rule the country, but you take care of us, the people,” writes diplomat Jean-Marie Guéhenno. on twitterLate December 2022. “Xi Jinping is in a precarious respite because the moment Chinese anger grows so great that the regime could be shaken by it, the party will sacrifice its number one without a second’s hesitation and at most Great joy for everyone he had dismissed from management,” even MEP Bernard Guetta (Renew Europe) predicts on his side.
Also read the column: Article reserved for our subscribers “The endless prolongation of the zero Covid target in China has had a very high human and economic cost”
Certainly, images of overcrowded hospitals and 24-hour lines at crematoria have gone around the world. But make no mistake, at the same time China is picking up again. Train stations, airports, hotels and restaurants face a crowd they haven’t seen since 2019. Restaurant reservations for January 21, the eve of the Lunar New Year that opens the Year of the Rabbit, would reach 90% of 2019 levels. One only has to go to a tourist spot to see that after three years of a zero Covid policy, the Chinese are delighted to be able to travel again and go out with friends or find their families, which some have not been able to visit during all these years the pandemic. Admittedly, they understood that the number of deaths from Covid-19 was infinitely higher than the authorities acknowledged, even if they revised the figures upwards on Saturday 14 January, but they also know that the virus wreaking havoc in the rest of the world, especially in the United States.
If Xi Jinping’s popularity – always difficult to gauge – will undoubtedly suffer from this death toll, the conclusion that his legitimacy is being questioned by the Chinese is more a matter of wishful thinking – an opinion determined by the what you want – just an analysis. Many Chinese are certainly wondering if these three years of zero-Covid policies were really necessary, but they continue to believe that their country has managed this epidemic better, or at least less badly, than the United States, the only country they compare to.
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