Can China let go of Zero Covid? A perfect storm of popular dissatisfaction awaits

While the headline figures on vaccination look impressive — with more than 90% of adults having received two doses — a more detailed examination shows major gaps, particularly among the elderly. Figures from May showed that only 62% of Shanghai’s over-60s had been vaccinated, and only 38% had received a booster. The problem is likely to be worse in less developed areas of the country, and is compounded by a nationalistic refusal to use imported vaccines and doubts about the efficacy of Chinese-made vaccines. Combine this with the huge size of China’s population, and any decision to allow Covid to “let rip” is going to result in millions of hospitalisations and many tens of thousands of deaths.

The consequence of such mass death on public opinion, after three years of huge national sacrifice in the name of Zero Covid, must terrify the Politburo. And this is far from the only domestic challenge facing the Communist Party. Youth unemployment stands at almost 19%, growth is slowing to European levels, and the giant game of “pass the government debt burden down the line” is approaching its $1.6 trillion denouement. It’s not hard to imagine a perfect storm of popular dissatisfaction in the not-too-distant future.

All of which means that Zero Covid will be a very useful policy in the coming years. When, for example, irate customers attempted to demonstrate outside the offices of a collapsed bank in Henan province, many of them found their health status on their smartphone apps suddenly turned red, preventing them from travelling. Such micro-targeting will enable the authorities to keep a lid on unrest.

More fundamentally, Zero Covid is an opportunity for the Communist Party to do what it loves doing most. As John Culver, former US National Intelligence Officer for East Asia, has noted, this is a chance for the Party to return to its old ways. The economic reforms of the Nineties that drove the country’s rapid economic growth also brought about the end of the Party’s “work unit” system, which had been the foundation of its control over the population throughout the post-revolutionary period.

During his decade as Party general-secretary, Xi Jinping has prioritised one thing above all: control. We can argue about whether Xi is a Marxist or not, but there can be no doubt that he’s a Leninist. For him, the Communist Party is the machine that keeps the country together and drives it forward. All the ills of the 2000s — the corruption, loose morals and the weakening of the sinews of state — can be blamed on the loss of Party discipline.

For the past decade, Xi has been revivifying Party control of society and the economy. In 2017, for instance, the Party’s charter was revised to include the line: “Party, government, army, society and education, east, west, south and north, the party leads on everything.” State-owned enterprises have been rebuilt, private firms and foreign companies have been obliged to set up Party cells.

Zero Covid, then, is a means to exert the same level of control over apartment blocks, residential compounds and private lives. Even after the tide of Covid eventually retreats, China will be left with the reinforced surveillance and the digital and physical barricades that have been constructed over the past three years. Yet if, as expected, the economy heads further south in the coming months, the Party is going to need something else to keep the people mobilised.

The most obvious contender is nationalism. So brace yourself for some intensive patriotic messaging in the coming years, whether it be over Taiwan, foreign insults, or assorted enemies within. The Party will be walking along the tricky line between nurturing the “hurt feelings of the Chinese people” and keeping a lid on popular resentment. That’s where the local Party cadres and neighbourhood wardens will earn their pay, spotting the sparks of discontent and ensuring they are swiftly snuffed out.

This seems to be the prognosis for China; a careful opening in some places but also a tightening of control wherever the leadership deems it necessary. The question worrying the Politburo is whether the online participants in Singles’ Day, awaiting their deliveries of freshly purchased consumer goods, will march in step with the Party’s mobilisation and messaging, or turn off and tune out.

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Bill Hayton is an associate fellow with the Asia-Pacific Programme at Chatham House. He is the author of The Invention of China, published this month by Yale University Press

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