Crossing the river but feeling sharp stones

Xi Jinping and China's Covid rectification

Late on Wednesday afternoon, the Biden administration announced it will impose Covid requirements for travelers from China as of 5 January 2023. Passengers arriving from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) need provide evidence of a negative Covid test taken within 48 hours prior to departure to gain access to the United States. With the virus and its transmission raging across China, one must wonder how bad the pandemic conditions in China will be when this provision goes into effect seven days from now. Tremendous numbers of infected travelers arriving in Europe over the past couple of days prove, as occurred just barely three years ago, that Covid knows no political boundaries as it spreads stealthily with human travel.

We are not, however, hearing much from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership. Xi Jinping, merely two months ago proclaimed by many western analysts as the most powerful leader in the country at least since Mao (if not through the 73 years the PRC itself has existed), is modeling different behaviour than traditional CCP crisis management. And it does not seem a powerful behaviour.

Events in the first half of 2008 offer a comparison. During a massive snowfall paralysing the eastern portion of the country at the beginning of the lunar holidays when literally tens of millions would go home for several days in an almost sacred manner, transportation networks froze, literally and figuratively. China’s travel networks proved unable to operate because of the heavy snow (it was even worse than Southwest Airlines’ current meltdown). The facilities such as train stations and airports strained under not only the inevitable Chinese anxiety regarding crowds with unfulfilled expectations and managing the human dimensions of thousands of stranded travelers. The CCP leadership made certain then second-in-command Wen Jiaobao was visible showing concern, appearing on state-controlled television and meeting with those stranded. This sort of show of concern is as predictable in a crisis as the dry desert winds blowing off the Gobi. He was the visible face of Party concern.

A mere three months later, an earthquake devastated the most populated province Sichuan. While the People’s Liberation Army confronted massive logistical challenges getting relief to the area, grandfatherly Wen again made many appearances to comfort the families who lost so much. This was particularly poignant since many of the tremor’s victims were children killed in schools, leaving the regime open to charges that corruption led to these deaths.

Both of these dreadful natural disasters led the government bowing to the Confucian cultural norm of the ruler, the Son of Heaven in the old days or the CCP today, addressing the people’s well-being. This is fundamental, harkening back to the reasons regimes historically fell from power in the Middle Kingdom. Without the ruler protecting his population, the Mandate of Heaven (or ruler’s right) could move on to someone else better responsible for the people he governs.

Xi Jinping has a major problem. This Fifth Generation (of the PRC) leader spent the past ten years associating all things good with himself. He was the individual behind the CCP ‘anti-corruption campaign’ beginning in 2013, a move eliminating many potential political competitors while highlighting his personal commitment to a less corrupt Party. He also was the figure most closely associated with China’s expansion in overseas activity under the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’, overseas presence illustrating the rejuvenation and power of the Chinese nation. Xi was the voice calling for his fellow citizens to reconsider the value of Western education as threats to China and certainly threats to the inevitable CCP governing of this vast nation.

Then Xi became the face of the Zero-Covid policies for just barely less than three years. These moves to prevent the spread of disease were part of why he offered something better than the failures of the west. His Zero-Covid was a non-negotiable prevention that would prove disasterous in the face of an inevitable spread predicted by science for people he left unprotected against it.

Xi’s decision to abandon Zero-Covid coincided with (and one must think resulted from) spreading protests regarding the effects of this draconian set of prohibitions. Chinese citizens had already seen Shanghai, one of the largest urban centers in the world, locked down for months, disrupting absolutely all aspects of the life there and continuing to disrupt global supply chains. The prospect in November of 2022 that this could continue met stiff and growing opposition across China as protestors braved surveillance mechanisms and the many levels of state police to demand a lessening of, if not end to, restrictions. The protests grew for about two weeks before Xi caved and the restrictions rapidly began disappearing.

The Zero-Covid policies had been a finger in the dam against the inevitable spread of the virus throughout the 1.3 billion people in the PRC. The past three years show nations where leaders thought they had shut out the virus were invariably wrong; they might only have delayed the spread but human interaction around the world today makes isolation from the illness impossible to achieve. As U.S. specialist Michael Osterholm said in 2021, the virus would find people if they were unvaccinated. Since Xi’s Zero-Covid required no massive vaccination campaign, Osterholm’s words were prescient not only for the west but sadly for China. Xi’s wishful thinking he could control the virus through shutting down its spread proved fundamentally ineffective after China’s citizens demanded the restrictions decrease. And the outcome we see for the PRC is horrifying and heartbreaking as the system is proving unable to cope, as I discussed on 25 December (Cynthia Watson, 'Fauci and the vindication of science', 25 December 2022

Over dinner last night, a friend raised the question last night about how Xi gets out of this problem. It’s hard to imagine how the response to Xi unfolds after the inevitable deaths surge and the crisis ultimates subsides, which will happen at some point. Xi is the face associated with these policies and will be the individual citizens remember as they look back on the pandemic years from now. The cult of personality has been crafted to extol the CCP leader but now is reminding all he is leader who is proving utterly incapable of remedying the problem.

Today, a CCP spokesman charged that the Biden move requiring tests was unwarranted according to the evidence of how China has handled its Covid challenges. European states are similarly imposing restrictions targetting flights filled with virus-laden passengers so the CCP response is not proving sufficient for many. The Party doesn’t take responsibility but it also seems almost peripheral to the unfolding disaster right now.

Xi Jinping’s daily concerns, however, are not the United States or Italy preventing travelers from visit Europe. Xi’s concerns, as always, are about domestic politics. What does he do to prove he is worried about the people of China? How did he implement policies leading to such profound public illness? Why were Chinese citizens not offered vaccines that could help? How much will people publicly protest, demanding accountability? Will others in the Party demand similar accountability behidn the scenes? How will the Chinese public respond to his draconian policies in the future? How will this undermine Xi, the Party, and China? And what effects will this have on the health of the Chinese population long term? The list of problems only expands by the hour as the effects of the collapse of the Chinese health system continues.

China operates today from a position of weakness rather than the strength so many focus upon from outside. The question is whether this weakness will lead us to internal upheaval. Xi certainly is worrying about these things and not providing satisfactory answers. We may see the people in for a really rough ride. FIN