Chinese President Xi Jinping again defended his signature COVID-zero policy, while avoiding setting a timeline on when the strategy that’s become a source of growing frustration for the public will be changed.
“We have put people first and put lives first, and upheld ‘dynamic COVID zero’ without wavering,” he said Sunday in a speech at the opening of the ruling Communist Party’s twice-a-decade congress in Beijing.
He said the government had “protected people’s safety and health as much as possible, and achieved great results by balancing virus measures, and economic and social development.”
The comments underscore the 69-year-old’s commitment to the zero-tolerance approach to stamping out the virus — which has been in place in the world’s No. 2 economy since the early days of the pandemic — even as signs of discontent emerge.
The People’s Daily, the ruling party’s flagship newspaper, published commentaries over three straight days in the last week that defended the strategy, signaling to the public and investors that China is unlikely to shift away from it any time soon despite the social and economic costs.
Still, some analysts see Xi leaving himself room for making changes to COVID zero. Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations based in the U.S., said Xi “certainly wants to defend a policy that’s been so closely tied to him, that’s understandable.”
“But I was a little bit surprised he didn’t repeat what he said in June, which was repeated by People’s Daily,” Huang said. “He seems to have slightly retreated from what he said before. And he didn’t send a clear signal that this policy will be pursued in the long run.”
The Chinese leader focused on the government’s success in limiting the number of deaths and illnesses, Scott Kennedy, from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV, though Xi didn’t get into details “specifically around ‘dynamic COVID zero.’ He left open room for some potential changes and adjustments.”
Earlier this year, Xi said on a visit to the central city of Wuhan where the coronavirus first appeared that COVID zero was the most “economic and effective” policy for China. He added that “such strategies as ‘herd immunity’ and ‘lying flat’ would lead to consequences that are unimaginable.”
The latest official support for COVID zero comes as the public is showing signs it is unhappy with it. Last week, Chinese censors took the extreme step of restricting the search term “Beijing” on social media after Xi was denounced in public in the capital.
On Thursday, two banners criticizing Xi and COVID zero were displayed on a bridge near a major university. One read: “We want food, not PCR tests. We want freedom, not lockdowns and controls.”
Last month, Morgan Stanley joined other major investment banks in predicting China would likely ease COVID restrictions and reopen by spring 2023. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. had said China likely won’t begin reopening before the second quarter of next year, while Nomura Holdings Inc. sees possible easing after March, once a reshuffle of China’s top leadership is completed.
Chinese officials have said the nation has had 1 million COVID cases since the start of the pandemic, or about 0.07% of the population. They note that the low rate of infections, as well as its total death toll of some 5,200, pales in comparison with countries like the U.S.
The low death toll makes moving away from strict pandemic rules complicated, and the size of the population makes the stakes even higher. More than a million people might die if China — which has little natural immunity — were to abandon COVID zero, according to an analysis earlier this year by researchers at Shanghai’s Fudan University.
The absenteeism and economic chaos seen in Western countries after they reopened would also pale in comparison to what the country might experience.
Parts of Zhengzhou, an iPhone manufacturing hub, and the steel city of Anshan were still in lockdown on Sunday. Beijing said it had 19 new infections on Saturday and Shanghai announced 28 cases, leaving both mega cities on alert for bigger outbreaks.
