China got COVID wrong, and now Xi Jinping is paying the price
Protest movements routinely bring symbols that help define their cause. Umbrellas serving as shields against pepper spray came to symbolize demonstrations in Hong Kong in 2014 and again in 2019 as citizens protested anti-democratic measures pushed by Beijing.
Now in China, a simple blank sheet of paper has become the defining imagery for massive demonstrations against President Xi Jinping’s zero-tolerance approach to COVID-19. The protests mark the most significant display of defiance against the country’s Communist Party regime since the deadly demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
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At protests across the country, demonstrators have been holding aloft blank sheets of paper as a gesture against the Chinese government’s bids to censor or bury social media posts about the spread of dissent, and about the government’s role in an apartment building fire last week in the far western city of Urumqi. Protesters blame China’s stringent COVID-19 policies for the delay in putting out the fire, which killed 10 of the building’s residents.
Whether China’s COVID restrictions played a role in those deaths remains unclear. What is clear, however, is that Chinese citizens are fed up with outdated, draconian anti-COVID measures that are doing far more harm than good to China’s people and economy.
For America and much of the rest of the world, COVID-19 isn’t the suffocating crisis that it once was. On Thanksgiving, families feasted in homes across the U.S., while fans packed into stadiums to savor the rite of football on Turkey Day.
In China, citizens remain trapped in a pandemic limbo. A third of China’s population was estimated to have been under partial or complete lockdowns in November, according to Nomura, a Japan-based global financial services firm.
Earlier this year, Shanghai, China’s financial capital, endured a two-month lockdown that took a devastating toll on residents’ mental health as well as on the city’s economic output. The situation was even worse in the far western province of Xinjiang, where Urumqi is located. Residents were barred from leaving their homes for as long as 100 days.
President Xi, who secured an unprecedented third term as China’s leader, is paying a stiff price for inflicting on his people a misguided approach toward COVID. The lockdowns were meant to eradicate the virus’s spread, but lockdowns only work as short-term measures to buy time for the development and distribution of effective vaccines. Xi opted to rely on China’s own vaccines, which have proved to be far less effective than Western versions.
The country’s economic outlook grows gloomier by the day. Unemployment among youth has hit 20%, profits at Chinese companies big and small have slumped, and China’s unlikely to hit its projections of 5.5% economic growth for 2022, The New York Times reported.
Xi finds himself boxed in by past mistakes. If he doubles down on stringent COVID restrictions, he risks the potential for demonstrations to metastasize into unrest of unmanageable proportions. If he relents to protesters’ demands to rescind lockdowns, China’s COVID problem could dramatically worsen.
Xi must allow his nation’s citizens to express their deep frustration about a pandemic policy that has made their lives miserable, imperiled their livelihoods and derailed their nation’s economy.
— Chicago Tribune Editorial Board
