36 The Economist April 16th 2022
China
Covid-19Locked down, fed up
R
eading thenews backwards has long
been a useful skill in China, where offi
cials often obfuscate. Recently it has
seemed like a matter of survival for some.
Take the residents of Beijing, the capital,
who are girding themselves for a covid19
lockdown and all the hardship that might
entail. When the city’s officials announced
on April 11th that there was more than
enough food for everyone, people assumed
the opposite. “Understood, hurry and go
shopping now,” a cynic wrote online.
Beijing has fewer than 100 cases of the
virus. There are no clear indications of a
growing outbreak or of an impending lock
down. But residents recall the experience
of Shanghai, where local officials insisted
there would not be a citywide lockdown
right up to the moment they imposed one.
First they tried to lock down half of the city
at a time. Then they closed the whole place.
Residents who had trusted the authorities
quickly ran out of food. Now people in oth
er Chinese cities are stockpiling supplies,
determined not to make the same mistake.
China shows no signs of loosening its
zerocovid approach, which uses masstesting and strict lockdowns to crush out
breaks. If anything, the government is
tightening its controls. A report by Gavekal
Dragonomics, a research firm, found that
all but 13 of China’s top 100 cities (by gdp)
were implementing covid restrictions (see
chart on next page). Ten cities are in “se
vere lockdown”, meaning more than half
of residents are confined to their homes.
Changchun, Xuzhou and Shanghai were
recently in full lockdown. Shanghai has
announced that areas with no cases for two
weeks will see restrictions lifted.
For much of the pandemic the Chinese
public has joined officials in hailing the ze
rocovid strategy as a success. Over the past
two years China has had a lower mortality
rate from the virus and stronger economic
growth than any other big country. During
a recent speech celebrating China’s hosting
of the Winter Olympics in February, President Xi Jinping claimed that some foreign
athletes said China deserved “a gold medal
for responding to the pandemic”. Earlier
Mr Xi said the country’s anticovid efforts
“demonstrate the advantages” of the Com
munist Party’s leadership.
But the current wave is changing the
way people think about the virus—and
about the government’s strategy. No one
wants mainland China to end up like Hong
Kong, which was overwhelmed by the
highly transmissible Omicron variant,
leading to a spike in deaths among unvac
cinated old people. The mainland’s elderly
population is similarly vulnerable, so a
complete lifting of controls is out of the
question. At the moment, though, anec
dotal evidence suggests that more people
are dying because of the Chinese govern
ment’s restrictions than from the virus.
The state needs to adapt, say critics.
The 98yearold mother of Lang Xian
ping is one such victim. In a post on Weibo,
China’s version of Twitter, Mr Lang wrote
that she died of kidney failure after waiting
for hours at the entrance of an emergency
room, unable to enter without a negative
covid test. Mr Lang, meanwhile, argued
with local officials until they let him out of
his sealed compound. When he was finally
released, there were no cars on the street to
take him to the hospital. “I did not get to
see my mother one last time,” he wrote.
“This tragedy could have been avoided.”
These types of stories—tragic, trou
bling and widely shared—are growing
more common. And they are causing someB EIJING
China’s zero-covid strategy is not changing. But the way people think about it is→Alsointhissection
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