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The world has largely moved away from Covid, with the exception of China, where towns and cities are still closed overnight.
And that is unlikely to replace anytime soon, judging by President Xi Jinping’s keynote speech at the Communist Party Congress on Sunday. China, and indeed the world, expected a trail of détente. Historic 3rd term as Party leader, he said the government “will not hesitate” in its commitment not to sign in any case.
Driven by Xi’s approval, China’s blockades have been relentless, unpredictable and hellish through peak accounts. They have led to food shortages, paralyzed health care, hit the economy hard and even provoked occasional symptoms of protest.
But Beijing clung to Covid-0, which came to outline Mr. S. ‘s regime. Xi and the authoritarian bureaucracy at his disposal like almost no other policy.
The BBC found that since March, China has closed or closed absolutely 152 cities at the prefecture-level level, affecting a population of more than 280 million. But 114 of them have been closed since August, on the eve of the Party Congress.
Beijing is the only major city that has so far avoided a complete lockdown. Residents half-jokingly practice that the capital has achieved this by locking down the rest of the country when necessary. However, on Thursday, some housing estates and grocery shopping malls in Beijing were closed after a sharp spike in cases.
The BBC collected information since March, as it was when the fourth phase of Covid measures in China began: comparing lockdowns between stages is more complicated because the official language changes, distorts definitions and therefore the corresponding knowledge.
And Chinese bureaucrats have discovered creative new tactics to describe blockades. The measures were so debatable and feared that confusing official language was one way to make them more acceptable.
They then used words like “stasis management,” “stillness at home,” or, to be clearer, “stillness in the region” or “stop any unnecessary movement. “
Then came “temporary social control,” which, according to the authorities, was not a “blockade” but a reduced movement that, one way or another, would not affect “the general order of production and life. “And yet, “the public was asked to faint only if necessary. “
“Closed management” is another new word coined in the southern province of Guangdong. This means that the village, community or residential precinct is closed, with checkpoints at the entrances and exits. People and cars can get in and out with passes. People who do not live or paint in the closed domain cannot enter. But, citizens were told, this is not a blockade.
When tracking and tracing strategies began to shudder, enthusiastic officials proposed an alternative: “temporal and spatial overlap. “Covid-positive.
Instead of telling other people not to stop in their hometown for this year’s Spring Festival, the governor of Dancheng County in central Henan Province warned them that “those who return home with bad intentions will be quarantined first and then detained. “
China is now in what Beijing calls the phase of “clinical and precise zero dynamics,” the meaning of which no one is sure. It is intended to be a step forward from the previous policy of “zero dynamics”.
Dynamic because the concept is that it’s not just about locking down entire cities, but about reacting more dynamically to what the scenario requires. But on the ground, it feels like a series of endless blockages.
The year began with the closure of the tourist center of Xi’an, home to thirteen million people, for a month. Then, in March, a closure was announced in Shanghai. It was scheduled to last less than a week, but its 25 million people stayed. at home for two months. In September, Chengdu’s landlocked citizens were trapped in their apartments by an earthquake. Elsewhere, rescuers had to take a Covid test before they could save anyone.
That same month, thousands more people in two cities in Shanxi faced a lockdown without a single case being reported: authorities said it “contained the threat from outside. “A local party leader pledged to protect the domain “to host the XX Party Congress with fair results. “
Beijing has continually insisted that “dynamic zero” means that local government does not rely on a “one length for all” technique of complete lockdowns and mass testing.
But it turns out there’s a gap between this dictate and what’s happening in China’s cities. Several closures announced through local officials were missing from Beijing’s daily announcements in March and April, and one was added in Shenzhen that confined 17 million people to their homes. for a week.
Central government officials probably wouldn’t have sought to inspire blanket shutdowns by drawing attention to them, while local officials liked to use them for temporary outbreaks.
Experts also say China’s bureaucracy is much more centralized under M. Xi: this is a reversal of the decentralization that began after China introduced economic reforms. This now means that bureaucrats jealously enforce Mr. S. ‘s signature policies. Signature. Xi.
“Xi’s appetite for adaptive governance and his relationships with local government vary across the field,” said Yuen Yuen Ang, an associate professor of political science at the University of Michigan.
“On his flagship policies, which he has said have no room for ‘hesitation,’ there is little or no room for local governments to make adjustments. In fact, to move forward, they will have to over-implement Xi’s non-policy with enthusiasm. “public edicts, even if the net result is harmful. “
From April onwards, Beijing’s ad count coincided with that of local notices; around the same time, M. Xi reaffirmed his stance of maintaining a zero-covid approach. As the year progressed, more and more cities stopped meticulously tracking and went into complete lockdowns. , even though only a few cases were reported.
Local officials are motivated by concern about punishment and a desire to show loyalty to Mr. Xi, says Wu Guoguang, a senior researcher on China at Stanford University. He was previously a member of the political reform group of the Communist Party of China.
When it comes to proving his loyalty, Wu adds, “There is an undeclared festival among local leaders, which provides great spice to their probably unreasonable measures. “
And, experts say, it’s no coincidence that the blockades began to spread in the run-up to the congress.
“Covid is political in China,” says William Hurst, professor of Chinese at the University of Cambridge.
The conscientiously scripted party congress once every five years has specific significance this year: if held according to M. Xi, he has become the first leader since the first communist-era leader, Mao Zedong, to serve as party leader for a third term. And there is nothing that can ruin the party like a covid outbreak, especially since Mr. Xi and his bureaucrats insist that “dynamic zero” is a good fortune that has saved lives.
This prevented a primary outbreak like the one in Shanghai earlier this year, says Benjamin Cowling, professor of epidemiology at the University of Hong Kong. economic burdens,” he adds.
Locking up millions of others would likely keep the number of domestic cases low, but the decision to do so even as the rest of the world opens up also shows how ill-prepared China is for a post-Covid world.
Public fitness experts say that if zero covid really aimed to save lives, Beijing would have implemented a more vigorous vaccination policy like other countries. But China has refused to import vaccines despite evidence that its homemade vaccines have not proven as effective. Unvaccinated seniors, whom Beijing says it seeks to protect with zero-Covid, have died from the virus.
But what Zero-Covid has done, experts say, is give a look and stability as the biggest political event of the year unfolds.
Professor Hurst expects the intermittent closures to last at least until March next year, when the Chinese equivalent of parliament meets Hurst Xi as president for the third time.
“Lockdowns prevent covid outbreaks from spreading,” adds Professor Hurst. “But they also exercise incredibly tight social control. “