The Economist - UK (2022-03-26)

54 China The Economist March 26th 2022

millions  in  a  famine  of  his  own  making,

bitter  political  struggles  within  the  party

and  at  least  one  attempted  coup.  Deng

Xiaoping  retained  authority  well  after  his

retirement,  despite  public  resentment  of

his bloody suppression of the Tiananmen

Square protests of 1989 and open criticism

of his policies by conservatives in the party

who  saw  them  as  a  catalyst  of  the  unrest.

Similarly  Jiang  Zemin,  who  had  overseen

mass lay­offs from state­owned firms (an­

gering millions of workers as well as con­

servatives), wielded much power long after

he retired from his last post in 2004. 

Mr Xi’s bid for an extension of his rule

must anger some in the party. Cai Xia, a for­

mer  academic  at  the  party’s  most  presti­

gious training centre for officials (she now

lives  in  America),  has  accused  Mr  Xi  of

forcing  the  party  to  “swallow  dog­shit”  by

ordering the Central Committee in 2018 to

approve a constitutional revision to facili­

tate his bid. But there is little sign today of

the kind of turbulence in elite politics that

marked the build­up to Mr Xi’s anointment

as party chief in 2012. That year saw near­

open feuding involving a prominent polit­

ical  rival,  Bo  Xilai,  a  member  of  the  Polit­

buro whom Mr Xi later accused of being in­

volved in a plot to seize power. 

Purges  have  continued.  An  18­month

“rectification”  campaign  of  the  domestic

security forces ended late last year, aimed

in part at rooting out those disloyal to the

party and Mr Xi. Its most powerful targets

included a deputy minister of public secu­

rity, Sun Lijun, who was accused of leading

a “political cabal” within the police (he was

formally charged with corruption in Janu­

ary), as well as Fu Zhenghua, a former min­

ister  of  justice.  On  March  21st  it  was  an­

nounced  that  a  former  vice­president  of

the supreme court, Shen Deyong, was un­

der investigation for unspecified crimes. 

But  there  is  no  sign  of  any  open  cam­

paigning  for  power  of  the  type  that  Mr  Bo

engaged  in.  Mr  Xi’s  relentless  onslaught

against  corruption—sometimes  a  smoke­

screen  for  attacking  his  political  ene­

mies—has sown such fear within the party

hierarchy  that  it  is  hard  to  imagine  any

such  challenge  today.  Barriers  to  organis­

ing  against  him  are  “near  insurmount­

able”,  wrote  Richard  McGregor  and  Jude

Blanchette  in  a  report  on  post­Xi  succes­

sion scenarios that was published last year

by the Centre for Strategic and Internation­

al Studies in Washington and the Lowy In­

stitute in Sydney.

On  his  management  of  the  pandemic,

Mr Xi is showing no sign of wavering. “Per­

severance  is  victory,”  he  said  at  a  meeting

on  March  17th  of  the  Politburo’s  seven­

member  Standing  Committee.  He  called

for a “step­up” in mobilisation and “unre­

mitting  efforts”  to  combat  the  current

wave  of  outbreaks.  Mr  Xi  also  said  that

“maximum” effort should be made to min­

imiseharmto theeconomyandsociety.

Butsimilarphraseshavebeenusedbyoffi­

cialsbeforeoverthepasttwoyears.

Crucially,therehasbeenlittlesignof

anylet­upinthepunishmentofofficials

forlettingcovidspreadontheirwatch.The

SouthChinaMorningPost, a newspaperin

HongKong,hascountedmorethan 70 who

havebeensackedorreprimandedduring

thiswave.The experienceofHongKong

mayencouragemainlandofficialstostay

vigilant.Thenumberofcasesdetecteddai­

lyinthatcityfarsurpassesthetotalonthe

mainland.DailydeathsinHongKonghave

risentoabout 200 comparedwitha hand­

ful,ifthat,intherestofChina.Astheysee

it,HongKong’splightistheresultofnot

pursuing azero­covidpolicythoroughly

enough.Theynotethatitlacksthekindof

manpowerthemainlanddeploystoensure

compliance(seenextstory).

Atthismonth’sparliamentarymeeting

MrLi,theprimeminister,admittedthego­

ingwouldbetough.Thisyear,hesaid,Chi­

nafacedan“obviousincreaseindangers

andchallenges”.Butheendedhisspeech

withhisusualinjunction:“Wemustunite

evercloseraroundthepartycentrewithXi

Jinpingatitscore.”Itwouldtakedaringto

dootherwise.n

Thepandemic

The footsoldiers of

zero-covid

T

he thirdfall  was  the  one  that  finally

put Gao Ying in the hospital. As a com­

munity health worker, she had been help­

ing Hangzhou, her home city, fight a surge

in covid­19 cases. She had not slept in her

own bed for two weeks. She was exhausted.

Still, on March 18th she set off for a meeting

on  local  covid­control  measures.  That’s

when she collapsed three times in a lift, the

third time smacking her head on the wall.

Video  of  the  incident  was  captured  by  a

cctvcamera and shared on social media.

Ms  Gao’s  tireless  efforts  were  in  re­

sponse to an outbreak that most countries

would  consider  trivial.  Hangzhou,  with

12m  people,  had  recorded  just  54  symp­

tomatic cases of covid in the two weeks be­

fore her fall. (Ten more were asymptomat­

ic.)  Overall,  China  has  logged  around

27,000  new  local  symptomatic  cases  in

March, fewer than America recorded most

days this month. Still, it is the biggest out­

break  in  China  since  the  early  days  of  the

pandemic (see chart on next page). And it

is  straining  the  country’s  “dynamic  zero­

covid” policy, which aims to stamp out the

virus with mass testing, extensive contact

tracing and strict lockdowns. Those efforts

involve millions of workers like Ms Gao. 

Technology,  such  as  tracking  software,

helps. But much of the work involves clip­

boards, telephones and barricade tape. An

important  role  is  played  by  some  110,000

neighbourhood  committees—legacies  of

the  Mao  era,  when  they  helped  China’s

Communist  Party  keep  order.  Each  com­

mittee  has  between  five  and  nine  mem­

bers,  as  well  as  many  volunteers.  Today

they  keep  tabs  on  residents,  help  enforce

lockdowns and organise testing. 

A  neighbourhood  committee  member

might, for example, ask a person who has

just  travelled  from  another  city  to  take  a

test  or  stay  inside  for  a  few  days.  During

targeted lockdowns of, say, a housing com­

pound, they control who gets to go where.

(Security guards and China’s 7.7m food­de­

livery  workers  are  also  important  during

these  times.)  Smaller  cities,  of  5m  people

or  fewer,  are  supposed  to  be  able  to  test

everyone in just two days. That involves a

lot  of  door­to­door  visits  by  committee

members, as well as volunteers who organ­

ise people in queues. 

Contact tracing, in particular, is labour­

intensive.  The  city  of  Shanghai  alone  has

3,000  workers  devoted  to  the  effort.  Most

are  public­health  officials.  During  out­

breaks  they  can  be  on  call  24  hours  a  day.

Some sound a little worn out. “In a week of

continuous battle with the virus, everyone

stayed up all night several times, pushing

our  bodies  to  the  limit,”  says  one.  “So

please can everyone who receives a call be

patient and co­operate.”

If  some  people  are  frustrated  with  the

state’s  zero­covid  footsoldiers,  it  is  per­

haps because there are so many of them—

and  they  don’t  always  co­ordinate.  A  per­

son might receive a call from several differ­

ent  officials:  one  from  where  they  work,

another  from  where  they  live  and  yet  an­

other from where they have been recently.

B EIJING

A weary army of workers is battling the

virus in China

Counting contacts