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Illustration by Jaewoogy.com

While countries around the world are shifting their pandemic strategy to “living with COVID,” China is cranking up its “people’s war” against the disease based on a policy of “zero COVID.” Two weeks after members of a group tour to Inner Mongolia, Gansu Province, and the city of Xi’an tested positive for the coronavirus on Oct. 17, close to 500 cases have turned up in 16 provinces around the country.

The authorities have responded by shutting down whole cities and testing their populations for the disease. Following a single case in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, a testing program was launched on Oct. 30 for the entire urban population of 10 million people. When one passenger on a train bound for Beijing was identified as having been in close contact with a COVID-19 patient last week, the train was halted, and its 211 passengers were hustled off to a quarantine facility. More than 9,000 travelers in Inner Mongolia were also placed in quarantine.

Immigration regulations are even stricter. People entering from overseas face a mandatory three-week quarantine; even with that, visas are very hard to get. Koreans living and working in China have such a hard time securing reentry that they’re essentially stuck in China, separated from family members back home. For ordinary Chinese, leaving or reentering the country is virtually impossible. None of China’s top seven leaders — including President Xi Jinping himself — have gone overseas over the past 21 months. China has even decided to ban foreign spectators from attending the Beijing Winter Olympics next February.

Barring any unusual developments, China’s COVID-19 lockdowns are expected to continue through the second half of next year. The reasons for that are political in nature. Next October is when China will hold its 20th Party Congress — an important political event that will confirm Xi’s third term as president. The Chinese Communist Party is expected to issue a “resolution on history” at the sixth plenary session of its 19th Central Committee, to be held in Beijing on Nov. 8-11. This resolution —only the third in the history of the party — will emphasize its achievements over the past century. It will also set in motion the political itinerary leading to Xi’s third term in office.

Since China opened up to foreign trade, the party has limited presidents to two five-year terms, but Xi seeks to end the term limit and pave the way for prolonged one-man rule. The key achievement he’s citing to justify that move is victory in the people’s war against COVID-19.

When the novel coronavirus first began to spread in Wuhan in January last year, the Chinese public was enraged at the authorities’ sluggish response and cover-up. The narrative now, however, is that China is winning the war against the disease. China’s official statistics state that there have been 97,079 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 4,636 deaths so far, while the US has reported over 46 million cases and at least 740,000 deaths. That’s being highlighted as a crucial indication proving the superiority of the Chinese model of governance.

Some critics say that the seemingly endless cycle of over-the-top restrictions and lockdowns is exacting too great a price for workers and for small business owners, many of whom have gone bankrupt. But the Chinese authorities have far more reasons to stick to COVID Zero. The Chinese public is nearing a full vaccination rate of 80%, but doubts have been raised about the efficacy of Chinese-made vaccines. Easing border restrictions at this point could jeopardize China’s “success story.”

For China’s Communist Party and the government, strict quarantine measures provide a way to both maintain control over society at a politically sensitive time and to bottle up the assets of wealthy people who are nervous about Xi’s vision of “common prosperity.” The Global Times and other state-run media are boosting bandwidth about “the need to band together and trust the party’s zero-COVID policy.”

Victory in the people’s war on COVID-19 is turning China into a “steel cage” that’s cut off from the rest of the world.

By Park Min-hee, editorial writer

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