“CONTROL YOUR soul’s desire for freedom” is what a drone flying around apartment buildings in Shanghai told residents as it urged them to comply with quarantine regulations[1]. Recently in Shanghai, China faced its worst COVID-19 surge since the 2020 Wuhan outbreak, and patience wears thin amongst the people who were stuck in their homes since the end of March 2022. The first signs of a new outpour appeared at the end of February, with cases skyrocketing in the middle of March and finally peaking at over 53,345 on April 15, 2022[2]. This outbreak prompted the government to put an entire city with a population of around 26 million people under extensive lockdown[3]. Despite the gradual decrease in the number of new cases in the city, the strict lockdown measures remained. All of these actions come down to the Chinese government’s determination to stick to a “zero-COVID” policy. However, the latest crisis in Shanghai has demonstrated that the Chinese people may no longer be willing to follow suit.

What is China’s “zero-COVID” policy?

   Throughout 2020 and 2021, many countries—including South Korea, Vietnam, and New Zealand—adopted the “zero-COVID” policy. This policy typically uses aggressive containment measures such as restrictions on public gatherings, mass testing, contact tracing, and lockdowns to suppress and eliminate infections[4]. However, most of these countries have abandoned their “zero-COVID” policies as they proved to be too stressful on the economy and difficult to sustain in the face of the Delta and Omicron variants’ rapid spread[3]. Instead, these countries have settled for the “living with COVID-19” strategy[5]. Subsequently, these countries lifted mask mandates, started approaching COVID-19 as an endemic, and prepared the people to coexist with the virus.  China, on the other hand, remains adamant about continuing to pursue a zero-transmission status.

   The rationale behind implementing a “zero-COVID” policy is to prioritize human lives over economic profit. For China, the policy has produced notably successful results. So far, the country has recorded just over 5,000 fatal cases, an impressive feat compared to the United States’ over 1 million deaths––especially considering China’s significantly larger population density[2]. According to The Washington Post, the Chinese government also claimed that it “has avoided 1 million deaths and 50 million illnesses.” Moreover, although almost every single country took a large hit to its economy due to social distancing measures, China managed to stay afloat. In fact, while other advanced economies like the United Kingdom and France saw an economic decline in 2020, China’s gross domestic product (GDP) continued to grow[2].

   While China did prioritize people’s lives as other countries had at the beginning of the pandemic, its “zero-COVID” strategy diverged from others due to the ideology influencing the policy. In an interview with The Yonsei Annals, John Delury (Prof., Graduate School of Int. Studies) stated that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) follows a totalistic, single-party system expressive of its Leninist identity. The concept of high-level local mobilization, one of the key features of the Leninist political practice, means that the party will do whatever it believes is necessary to achieve its primary objective. This objective tramples over any other government goals or concerns, the latest concern being curbing the COVID-19 surge. Delury also said that “China would respond to [any big crisis] with a degree of Leninism,” implying that its current handling of the outbreak is not particularly exceptional “because that is just how things work in China.” However, he pointed out that linking all of the party’s decisions regarding COVID-19 to an ideology risks oversimplifying the situation because the reality “is much more multifactorial” than that. 

   When examining why China is not giving up on “zero-COVID,” it is important to consider this strategy’s political consequences. The ruling CCP poured a lot of political capital into implementing this policy and trumpeted its success. Suddenly reversing the “zero-COVID” strategy could potentially damage President Xi Jinping’s regime and his chances of being re-elected during the next National Congress later this year. The government backed itself into a corner with its stringent insistence on the “zero-COVID” policy and excessive pride in maintaining a nearly zero transmission status for a long time. Now that the bubble has burst, many doubt if sticking to this policy is sustainable[6].

Examining the Shanghai lockdown

   Two years of idyllic normalcy due to the effective containment of infection clusters was disrupted by cracks that originated from Shanghai. The bustling metropolis quickly transformed into a ghost town after mass testing in March revealed an exponentially rising number of positive COVID-19 cases. On March 27, a day before the beginning of a five-day area-separated lockdown in the eastern part of the city, 60 new cases were reported[5]. This number, potentially seen as surprisingly low by other parts of the world, could have led to an explosion of severe cases that could most likely overwhelm China’s healthcare system, which means that the ruling party would lose face. As cases continued to rise throughout March, the government decided to instate a city-wide lockdown for an indefinite time instead of dividing eastern and western parts of the city in phases[7]. What ensued was nothing short of mayhem as residents rushed to grocery stores to prepare for what many expected to be an excruciatingly long quarantine. 

   While authorities enforced stringent lockdown measures, residents in Shanghai grew more and more desperate. Citizens were first frustrated by the government’s disorganization and lack of preparedness for an extensive lockdown. They reported having difficulty ordering groceries online while the authorities lagged behind on food supplies. Some people were unable to access necessary pharmaceuticals or medical treatments for their pre-existing illnesses, which reportedly resulted in a few deaths[8]. Since all people who tested positive had to quarantine in an isolation facility, authorities had to separate families, often taking infected children away from their parents. Even people who tested negative were forced to quarantine if someone tested positive on their floor of residency. Multiple footages showed people being forcefully taken away by medical personnel or their entry doors being sealed off to prevent residents from going outside. There are also videos circulating on Weibo[9] showing people protesting quarantine restrictions by shouting out of the windows, crowding in front of locked exits to their homes and apartment buildings, or clashing with police and medical personnel, for which they can be fined or criminally punished[8]. In response, President Xi issued a warning on May 5 not to question or defy lockdown measures or his party’s “zero-COVID” policy[10].  

   Many of Beijing’s residents now fear a Shanghai-style lockdown following mass testing in April[11]. Due to an Omicron outbreak, more than 500 new cases have been recorded in the city since April 20[10]. Although Beijing’s restrictions are not as draconian as Shanghai’s yet, many public gatherings and transits have been suspended and many establishments across the city such as malls and gyms have been closed[12]. Whether Beijing will meet the same fate as Shanghai remains to be seen, but the mass testing of more than 20 million people in the city indicates that China’s government does not plan on backing down from its “zero-COVID” policy. 

The flaws in China’s approach

   Even though China saw many successes in implementing its “zero-COVID” policy before the situation took a turn for the worse this year, certain systematic drawbacks have surfaced as of now. As mentioned before, the Chinese government managed to avoid a high COVID-19 mortality rate, but the country’s overall mortality rate jumped to 7.18 deaths per 1,000 people in 2021, the highest recorded mortality rate since 2000[13]. This is most likely due to tight restrictions preventing patients with severe diseases from receiving hospital treatment. Furthermore, China’s government has long been suspected of underreporting the actual number of fatal cases as in official data, hospitals reportedly list other pre-existing conditions as the cause of death for people who died of COVID-19[14].

   Another big issue lies in the vaccination of the elderly population in China. Although statistics show that almost 90% of the entire population has been vaccinated, 82% of people aged between 70 and 79 have gotten vaccinated while only 51% of those over 80 have done so[15]. Such low vaccination rates among the elderly were initially caused by pre-existing vaccine hesitancy. However, according to Yanzhong Huang—a Senior Fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations—the success of the “zero-COVID” policy exacerbated the problem by creating a false sense of security. “Many older people thought, ‘There is no virus, why bother getting vaccinated and risk suffering from the side-effects?’,” said Huang[14]. The elderly are virtually unprotected from a highly infectious Omicron variant. As a result, if a serious outbreak—one that is much graver than the one the country is facing currently—were to occur, it is the elderly population that would be affected the most. 

   Lastly, the flaws in the Chinese government’s COVID-19 policy become more apparent when compared to the United States’ policy. Comparing the two countries shows how China’s centralized approach impacted its COVID-19 policy and its consequences when compared to the United States’ decentralized approach. China’s form of governance relies on the prominence of centralized power to ensure proper implementation of the “zero-COVID” strategy. The same policy was enforced across the entire country regardless of local infection rates, focusing on task-driven mobilization to contain clusters of infections. But this is also where China’s weakness appears. The central government’s reclusive power over all of the information, power, and policymaking challenges close monitoring of every local government closely and prevents consistent execution of their respective duties. On the other hand, the United States’ policies varied by state, with democratic states being stricter with containment measures and conservative states being more lenient with restrictions. The country’s growing polarization heavily affected its overall COVID-19 response, leading to more infections and casualties. However, depending on their available resources and infrastructures, all states managed to determine what worked best for each of them without close observance from the federal government. Both types of governance have their own advantages and drawbacks, but the Omicron variant may be too unwieldy for the Chinese centralized approach to handle in the long-term. 

The impact on the global community and China’s politics

   Delivering annual economic growth has always played an important part in backing the CCP’s legitimacy. However, the Xi administration may encounter trouble in upholding public expectations considering how both Shanghai and Beijing play a major role in the country’s economy. China’s economic power relies heavily on a high consumption rate, but people in a lockdown cannot consume at the same rate as they did before. Unemployment also stifles progress, and the unemployment rate increased to a record high of 6% in 31 major cities in March[7]. Furthermore, trade is also vital in ensuring the country’s economic growth. China’s share in global trade was 15% in 2020, making it the world’s leading economy in exported goods, but it may experience a hurdle with Shanghai’s ports being negatively impacted by the lockdown[18]. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects China’s economic output to decelerate to 4.4% this year as aside from lockdowns, the country is also being affected by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its effects on trade routes. Furthermore, this setback is expected to cause rising prices for foreign companies operating in Shanghai’s ports and global inflation supply disruptions as China is the world’s main manufacturer[6]. 

   Finally, there is an ongoing competition within the Chinese leadership between those who believe in the strong centralized authority of the CCP and those who prefer more decentralized governance[20]. Delury stated that the “zero-COVID” strategy “has reflected the trend of the Xi era moving towards a stronger center.” There has been a lack of local variation in the approach as all local governments follow the central government’s guidance. According to Delury, decentralized governance has been effective in the past and will be practiced in the future, but this swing will not happen during the destabilized conditions created by the Shanghai lockdown. 

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   By sticking with the “zero-COVID” strategy, China risks becoming isolated and economically unintegrated from the rest of the world, and it seems that the government has begun to recognize these risks. The government plans to ease lockdown measures in Shanghai in June, but there is no guarantee that a similar lockdown will not repeat in a different city and cause another economic slowdown[7]. Delury stated that “the Chinese government has a hard time recognizing that there is no perfect formula for eliminating COVID-19,” but vaccines are currently the strongest tool against the virus. He said that “the ‘zero-COVID’ policy is predicated on the vulnerability of the unvaccinated population,” and the only solution is to vaccinate more people. Whether the government does this or not is unknown, but it appears that the current conditions prevent the government from pursuing “living with COVID-19” even if it wanted to go down that path. 

[1] Twitter

[2] Our World in Data

[3] CNBC

[4] Barcelona Institute for Public Health

[5] The United Kingdom’s Government Digital Service

[6] The Economic Times

[7] The Guardian

[8] The New York Times

[9] Weibo: Popular Chinese social media platform

[10] CNN

[11] France 24

[12] Aljazeera

[13] The Diplomat

[14] The Financial Times

[15] Bloomberg

[16] The World Bank

[17] U.S. Department of Commerce

[18] The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

[19] The Korea Times