Xi’s Jinping’s Covid zero policy outed as political gaming

The strategy has been ordered for at least six more months to deliver the Chinese president another five years in power.

Health workers wearing personal protective equipment prepare a resident and a boy to board a bus in locked down Jing'an district in Shanghai on Monday. Picture: AFP

China’s Health Minister has ordered the continuation of “Covid zero” for at least six more months to deliver a “victory” of another five years in power for Xi Jinping.

Ma Xiaowei instructed comrades to “resolutely oppose the wrong thinking of coexistence with Covid”, underlining the intense politicisation of Beijing’s pandemic policy as it struggles with its worst outbreak since 2020.

Mr Ma praised Mr Xi for “personally commanding” the hardline policy, which has been abandoned by every other country in the world.

He said China would pursue “Covid zero” for at least six more months to “welcome the victory” of the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th national congress, which will extend Mr Xi’s tenure as president until 2027. It will be held by December.

In the lead-up to that meeting, Mr Ma pledged “the strictest, most thorough, most resolute and decisive” measures to fight the Omicron variant, whatever the cost.

“There must not be the slightest relaxation,” he wrote in the Communist Party’s central party school journal Study Times.

The minister’s political intervention comes as Shanghai approaches the second month of the strictest lockdown pursued anywhere in the world since Wuhan in 2020.

Analysts at Barclays, a British bank, downgraded their China growth forecast to 4.3 per cent for 2022, forecasting prolonged Covid disruptions in the world’s second-biggest economy.

Seven new deaths were announced on Tuesday, the highest number declared by China’s officials in more than two years.

Until late last week, China’s health officials had claimed there were no Covid deaths in the Shanghai outbreak, which has reached more than 300,000 confirmed cases.

There were reports of deaths in Shanghai’s biggest retirement centre a fortnight ago, but they were quickly censored.

In a change of approach, state media widely reported the latest seven deaths, aged between 60 and 101.

Influential voices on China’s social media said the deaths proved the heartlessness of those arguing the country should “live with the virus”.

Shanghai recorded more than 20,000 cases on Tuesday.

Despite this, Mr Xi’s Covid enforcer Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan recently told state broadcaster CCTV that “the goal of zero cases in the community is within reach”. Since being deployed by Beijing, she has overseen an approach in which babies have been removed from their mothers, pet dogs of the infected beaten to death and forced quarantine in overrun facilities for all who test positive.

In an attempt to give Shanghai’s 26 million residents hope that the situation is improving, local officials are reportedly set to announce the end of the spread of Covid outside quarantined areas by Wednesday.

Reuters reported the party secretary of Shanghai’s Baoshan district said Ms Sun’s team had ordered a “turning point” in the city’s Covid outbreak.

“This is a military order, there is no room for bargaining, we can only grit our teeth and fight for victory,” Chen Jie said.

Jin Dongyan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong, said it was “scientifically not possible” for Shanghai to end community-level transmission so quickly. “With some 20,000 new cases daily for days, it will not go to zero overnight,” he told the South China Morning Post.

China’s leader has kept well away from Shanghai during its outbreak, which has triggered heightened restrictions around the country. Mr Xi has repeatedly said China’s handling of Covid had demonstrated the superiority of its system of government. He was last photographed by state media on the tropical island province of Hainan, a favourite holiday spot for the party’s leaders.