'the mountains are high and the emperor is far away'

China's central government versus the locals

Beijing trotted out yet another well-known excuse today in response to the mounting protests on COVID lockdowns. The protests have roots in several issues, not merely the so-called ‘zero covid’ policy which is failing to prevent infections from cropping up across the Middle Kingdom. Without addressing the crux of the policy itself, the Chinese Communist Party is trying to shift the blame from General Secretary Xi Jinping to local officials on the ground with responsibility to address the burgeoning number of cases.

‘Some local governments take a one-size-fits-all approach, and take excessive policy steps that have neglected the demands of the public,’ according to a National Health Commission representative today.Edward White, Eleanor Olcott, Hudson Lockett, and Thomas Hale, 'China blames local officials for outbreaks as Beijing sticks to zero-Covid plan', Financial Times, 29 November 2022.

This Orwellian double talk is so Chinese. If you don’t like the topic, ignore the part you don’t like, blame the local officials for not administering what the central government wants, and step back. This assertion implies that if those in the leadership of the country could only deal directly with the average person on the street, the conversation would go smoothly because local officials garble things, misconstrue directives, corruptly interpret things to their advantages, and pursue countless other defensive mechanisms while the real leaders of the country in the capital are not making a mistake.

In this particular instance, Xi Jinping’s COVID policies have remained clear cut for more than two and a half years. Local officials in China are extraordinarily reluctant to take initiative deviating from his policies because they could run afoul of the higher echelons of the CCP itself. Criticising higher ups in the social system always generates anxiety but under Xi this is reaching new levels. Of course this is a one-size-fits-all policy as it was intended to be such because it’s Xi’s thought.

China’s citizens are frustrated for many reasons but their anger does not solely target the local officials. Chants reported at several protests clearly record specific denouncement of Xi himself and CCP rule. I have no doubt there are protests where local officials are targets but the response of the central government casting blame for poor performance off on the locals is pretty common.

This is not merely a problem with the CCP. The concept that the Son of Heaven, the traditional ruler of China, having interests of his citizenry in mind when he knows what they are is an old one. It absolves the Son of Heaven of making mistakes and keeps the local officials off guard.

The use of this central-government-versus-local-officials argument by Beijing to diffuse the protests is a twist but one not likely to carry much weight with protesters now. Instead, deploying thousands of internal security personnel will probably have a much more immediate effect.

Taking responsibility for actions is not something many people anywhere in the world seem to welcome. China is hardly the only place where shifting blame happens: this is human nature much of the time. But, in the case of the zero-Covid policy and resulting protests, Beijing is probably not going to convince many that Xi is as innocent of responsibilities as this Health Department statement wanted to assert. FINFIN