The Economist February 19th 2022 China 55“Zerocovid”asa loyalty test
H
ong kongis about to endure its worst three months since the
covid19 pandemic began. With new case numbers running at
thousands per day and doubling every few days, the financial and
trading hub of 7.5m people faces an outbreak that—were it hap
pening in mainland China—would trigger a citywide lockdown,
with millions of people told to stay home, if necessary for weeks.
Hong Kong will not close in the same way, its chief executive,
Carrie Lam, assured the public on February 15th, even as she ad
mitted that a fifth covid wave is overwhelming hospitals and quar
antine sites. The central government, knowing that a lockdown
cannot simply be imposed from the mainland, says that primary
responsibility for pandemic control rests with Hong Kong. But
Hong Kong’s caution is making national leaders in Beijing rest
less. Also on February 15th official media reported President Xi
Jinping’s instruction that the territory use “all necessary mea
sures” to control the outbreak (to illustrate Mr Xi’s concern for res
idents, a stateowned Hong Kong tabloid depicted himbeside a
red Valentine’s heart). A flurry of editorials from mainland com
mentators and scholars complains of Hong Kong officials who
“worship” Western values and lack faith in China’s “dynamic zero
covid” strategy of crushing each outbreak. If epidemiologists’
models are right, Hong Kong’s latest surge will decline by summer.
At that point, a broader political reckoning will follow.
Tian Feilong, of the semiofficial Chinese Association of Hong
Kong and Macau Studies, has written that the territory’s civil ser
vants and government leaders are failing the test set by party
chiefs in Beijing, that Hong Kong must be governed by “patriots”.
That same test was used last year to ban opposition candidates
from running for elected office, even as a nationalsecurity law
was used to jail dozens of democracy campaigners for their roles
in antigovernment protests. With overt opposition crushed, at
tention is turning to “soft resistance” among Hong Kong’s admin
istrators. Civil servants stand accused of nostalgia for British rule,
and of secretly envying Western countries that choose to live with
covid in the name of individual freedoms—a stance that Chinese
experts excoriate as “social Darwinism” that leaves the weak to
perish, in contrast with the Communist Party’s stern but lifesav
ing controls. Ominously, mainland commentators have questioned Mrs Lam’s commitment to “dynamic zero covid”, grum
bling about her use in late January of a dismissive Chinese phrase
when noting that she was not the initiator of the strategy. A hand
picked committee must choose a new chief executive for Hong
Kong in late March. National leadershave yet to signal whether
they favour Mrs Lam for a second term. Her own plans are unclear.
Regina Ip, a proestablishment member of Hong Kong’s legisla
ture and of the chief executive’s cabinet, or Executive Council,
calls it “undeniable that many senior officials are held hostage by
Western ideas about the protection of fundamental rights and
freedoms which they hold in awe but do not fully understand”.
Mrs Ip backs sterner measures, with the mainland as a model. At
the moment, she says, case numbers are soaring while Hong
Kong’s borders are mostly closed, leaving the territory “falling be
tween two stools: neither as effective in controlling the spread of
covid as mainland China, nor as open as our rival city, Singapore”.
Yet few believe that citywide lockdowns are possible in Hong
Kong. Ren Yi, a Beijingbased blogger read by many of China’s me
dia and political elites, thinks that proestablishment Hong Kong
politicians are reluctant to tell national leaders that they cannot
enforce full, mainlandstyle controls. Mr Ren, whose penname is
Chairman Rabbit, does not welcome this reality. But he felt a duty
to write a muchcited recent post about the power of Hong Kong’s
“deep state”, in order to “try to lower Beijing’s expectations”.
Some differencesare practical. Hong Kong lacks the hundreds
of thousands of Communist Party members and public workers
who stand guard outside closed housing estates, round up resi
dents for mass testing and deliver food parcels to those trapped in
doors, when mainland cities of similar size are sealed. Hong
Kong’s police force has fewer than 31,000 officers: not enough to
lock 7.5m people indoors. With baffling complacency, during
months without covid cases, Hong Kong failed to stock up on rap
id tests or prepare sites to isolate those with mild symptoms be
fore the fastspreading Omicron variant hit. Authorities are now
scrambling to requisition empty public housing and hotel rooms. No law can force people to trust their rulers
Then there is Hong Kong’s divided politics. Many residents deeply
distrust both Mrs Lam and national leaders in Beijing. They would
resist tools that drive compliance on the mainland, such as apps
that allow officials to confine those suspected of proximity to co
vid cases by remotely turning their smartphone “health codes”
from green to yellow or red, barring them from trains and shops.
Hong Kong is hardly laissezfaire about covid, having now
banned outdoor gatherings of more than two people and locked
down neighbourhoods for compulsory testing. Ben Cowling, a
professor of epidemiology at the University of Hong Kong, worries
about death rates in coming months, notably among the oldest,
who have largely shunned covid vaccines. Once this wave passes
he can imagine fresh attempts to eliminate the virus in Hong
Kong, in order to try once more for an open border with the main
land. “I don’t think Omicron is the end of zero covid,” he says.
Mainland scholars urge Hong Kong to accept pandemic help
from the central government to boost national pride. They charge
those seeking access to the outside world with elitism: opening to
the mainland, they say, is what the masses want. China’s top offi
cial in Hong Kong, Luo Huining, last month warned the city
against “selfpity” over its role as an adjunct to China’s overallde
velopment. Behind debates about public health, argumentsabout
loyalty lurk. They will outlast even this relentless pandemic.nChaguan
Hong Kong can open to the mainland or the world. Not both