Despite the scrutiny, social media accounts have blatantly shown signs of disagreement and despair about the consequences in the big city. Party officials have been harassed by hungry residents for inspections that would normally be friendly to public relations. Someone even put an open empty refrigerator on his balcony to show the despair of hunger. The Chinese authorities have proven to be extremely effective in locking people up, less effective in keeping them fed or providing prescriptions to those locked up at home. The pandemic has highlighted internal authoritarianism in otherwise seemingly liberal democratic governments, so it was no surprise that Beijing Communists led the charge of strict lockdown, even keeping necessary staff like pharmacists at home. But Xi’s affinity for such rigid control measures goes beyond the pandemic hysteria that gripped Western leaders. At first, in early 2020, whatever the cause of the Covid epidemic, China’s combination of a profit-driven economic model within a total social control system seemed equipped to control it. From Wuhan to Whitehall, the mandarins became all Chinese overnight. However, now, two years later, the legitimacy of President Xi is on the line. Even his dictatorship operates a kind of social contract. If people keep their noses away from politics and applaud persistently, they can get on with their lives and work. Now China’s export economy has stalled due to Xi’s obsession with Zero Covid. To paraphrase Lenin, Xi’s attitude seems to be “prosperity is good, but control is better.” The Chinese communist way of handling Covid’s repetition is to cause a recession in its previously prosperous economy. This affects us all. In addition to the famous Shanghai Bund, countless container ships and cargo ships anchor without being able to deliver raw materials or export goods on board. This is an own goal for China’s economy but a blow to global supply chains. There is a Maoist method in Xi’s apparent economic madness. The West in particular is reorienting itself away from Chinese products. But President Xi’s policies at home seem to be pushing the West to find alternative suppliers. It is almost as if authoritarianism is Xi’s new strategic goal. Relying on resource-rich anti-Western countries like Russia for raw materials, Xi seems to be turning China inward. It has not abandoned the mix of Maoism and the dominant market since the early 1980s, but may have embraced “Capitalism in a Country”. Xi’s China will promote domestic consumption as a driver of growth over foreign trade. This inward shift risks alienating powerful interest groups within the Communist Party, especially in Shanghai’s well-connected business elite. In fact, from top to bottom in this big business city, people are going to miss out on Xi’s approach to public health and the economy. Let us not forget Shanghai’s tradition of revolutionary upheaval. It was the first stronghold of the Communist Party in the 1920s. It gave birth to the most radical groups in the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. If there is anywhere in China where popular discontent could turn into open protest, it is Shanghai. If the big wigs of the local Party, Xi’s opponents, felt that they could use the public outcry to undermine his power due to a mishandling of the lockdown, the components of a crisis would fall into place. Splits in the Party elite are the only way to effectively challenge communist control in China. Xi Jinping’s misguided attempt to use the pandemic to tighten his grip on the country could actually unleash political opposition. Protest can also be contagious.
