Xi Jinping may be the most powerful autocrat in the world, but he was forced this week to meet the needs of ordinary Chinese fed up with his “Covid-free” strategy. his failure.
A large number of ordinary Chinese – in Chinese words “hundreds of years old” – took to the streets to express their disappointment with China’s strict Covid-19 lockdown measures and implied that with China’s general repression. Many held up blank sheets of paper, indicating that they could not say what they wanted.
However, Xi did read those white papers. Police detained people protested and blocked off areas where people could gather — but the Chinese government was still forced to bow to public opinion. It vehemently declared a “new situation” and on Wednesday relaxed its Covid policy.
Not acknowledging much about the protests and while pretending that this is entirely their own idea, the Chinese leadership has announced an end to many of the heaviest elements of their Covid policy, the stopped the virus, as did the people of China.
The lockdown will become shorter and more targeted, and those who test positive for coronavirus with mild symptoms can stay at home instead of being sent to quarantine. Negative tests will no longer be routinely required in most public spaces. Cold medicines, which have been restricted from being sold so people can’t hide their Covid symptoms, will be back in stock.
However, the government’s response failed to address the larger desire to end autocracy.
The dictatorship remains, and those detained as a result of the street protests are probably still in prison. But Wednesday’s announcement is a remarkable turnaround.
Historically, popular protests in modern China have not resulted in more freedom, but less. In 1956, Mao decided to “let a hundred flowers bloom” — but was horrified when some of these blooming intellectuals criticized his rule. The end result was a crackdown that sent some of my Chinese friends to labor camps for two decades.
April 1976, a popular rally against the hardliners led them to fire one of the reformers, Deng Xiaoping. In 1978 and 1979, calls for a “Democratic Wall” for more freedom led to the imprisonment of activists such as Pseudo-Biblical. In 1986, student protests demanding more liberalization led to the firing of Communist Party leader and liberalization advocate, Hu Yaobang.
Then, the Tiananmen democracy movement of 1989 was a call for greater freedom — and the result was a massacre, long prison sentences, and the rise of hardliners that made countries become less free.
So it looks like a historic milestone that Xi was forced to bow to the protests, but the easing could come at a heavy price.
Xi has masterfully managed the pandemic for some time, reducing the Covid death rate to levels almost any country would envy. When there was a vaccine, however, Xi did not adapt well. He did not import more effective mRNA vaccines from the West and did not adequately promote vaccination and boosters for the elderly and vulnerable. He maintained the policy of blockade long after it was sustainable, partly because the classical dictator had trouble judging people’s opinions when he imprisoned them for speaking out.
The end result is that any rapid easing of Covid regulations today, without increasing vaccination rates for the elderly first, could lead to hundreds of thousands of Chinese deaths from Covid. It’s on Xi.
One of China’s great paradoxes is that in many respects it is an administrative marvel of self-regulation. It has overseen an extraordinary process of infrastructure development and educational improvement: The life expectancy of a child born in Beijing today is longer than that of a child born in Washington, DC. However, Chinese leaders often struggle to self-regulate in the ideological field.
The result: China’s authoritarian rulers oversaw the rise of an educated, urban middle class eager to become more involved, but the “China of the People” refused to let everyone in. person who does so.
During the reform period, China is said to have bribed many of its citizens by increasing their incomes. The implicit agreement is that the government will let people improve their lives, not decide their lives completely. Xi broke that deal with his Covid policy, making life worse.
Many years ago, when I was a Beijing correspondent for this newspaper, covering the Tiananmen protests, a young man voiced the nation’s aspirations as follows: “We have rice, but We want rights.”
In the latest protests, slogans were similar: “We want freedom, not closure. We want votes, not a ruler. We want dignity, not lies. We are citizens, not slaves.”
Those brave protesters changed China’s national policy, and their thirst for broader interests could be quelled by nothing but the virus; someday the Chinese Communist leadership will have to fulfill that very human wish. Xi may still be in power, but the legacy of this year’s protests may be a reminder that this longing still lingers, just below the surface, in the most populous country on earth.
