Tue, May 17, 2022 page8

• Lockdowns help Xi to solidify his power

  • By Yang Chung-hsin 楊宗新
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  While many countries’ COVID-19 policies are shifting toward coexisting with the virus, China is still sticking to its “zero COVID-19” strategy, which has frequently led to human rights abuses. As well as seeking to control the virus, there are political reasons for pursuing this policy.

  On the international front, China’s measures are meant to show that the collectivist “China model” is better at crisis control than Western individualism. As the country in which COVID-19 first emerged, China’s initial failure to control it led to accusations that Beijing was concealing the true number of infections and not notifying the international community soon enough, thus allowing the virus to spread around the world.

  To recover lost ground, China has continued to take strict precautions after gradually bringing its domestic outbreak under control.

  On the domestic front, sticking to its zero COVID-19 strategy serves the purpose of subduing local forces that defy the central government. Shanghai is the model for this strategy.

  When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) became the country’s top leader in 2012, his power base was not yet secure. That year, Han Zheng (韓正) was appointed Shanghai’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP) secretary. He was seen as a factional ally of former party general secretary and president Jiang Zemin (江澤民). Not until Xi started his second term in 2017 did he replace Han with his own confidant Li Qiang (李強).

  The strict controls imposed in Shanghai show senior officials across China that even Li, who is seen as No. 1 in the “Xi family army,” is not given special treatment, so there is no room for other officials to slack off.

  Sticking to the zero COVID-19 policy is also an effective way for the central government to extend its reach to the local level. Throughout the Shanghai lockdown, experts from Beijing have been stationed there to direct the city’s disease control measures, and this might become a long-lasting arrangement, giving the central government precedent to take control when an outbreak occurs in any city.

  This approach is reminiscent of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) use of its anti-communist encirclement campaigns to eliminate separatist warlords during the early stages of the Chinese Civil War. The KMT could have eliminated CCP bases, but its real aim was to take over or weaken defiant local powers under the guise of pursuing fleeing communists.

  The zero COVID-19 policy also stabilizes the country’s political environment. China’s strict epidemic prevention measures resemble martial law in the way they restrict people’s freedoms.

  Likewise, in July 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin took advantage of restrictions on public gatherings because of COVID-19 to block potential protests and secure the passage of a referendum on a constitutional amendment to allow him to run for two more presidential terms.

  While Xi might not face massive protests on his way to serving one or more additional terms in office, he must still be mindful of what factions within the CCP are thinking. With this in mind, strict measures to control the pandemic are an effective means of keeping officials quiet.

  In view of Xi’s desire to present a “China model” to the rest of the world and control local forces within China, there is not likely to be any change in the country’s zero COVID-19 policy until he starts his third term as CCP general secretary at the party’s 20th National Congress later this year.

  Yang Chung-hsin is a civil servant.

  Translated by Julian Clegg
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