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Xi Jinping’s Covid Crisis Is Really an Opportunity

The public discontent vented in bold demonstrations last month against China’s Covid containment policies represents the greatest domestic crisis President Xi Jinping has faced in his decade in power. His government quickly smothered the protests. It would be tempting to view things now as a slow-burn stalemate between a restless population and an unyielding authoritarian government. But the Communist Party’s relationship with the Chinese people is more complex than that.

As abruptly as it cracked down on the demonstrators, Mr. Xi’s government essentially yielded to their main demand, pivoting away from its unpopular “zero Covid” strategy in a striking display of responsiveness.…  Seguir leyendo »

Xi Jinping cede un poco. Pero no lo suficiente

Xi Jinping puede ser el autócrata más poderoso del mundo, pero esta semana tuvo que hacer maniobras para satisfacer las demandas de los chinos de a pie, hartos de su fallida estrategia de “cero covid”.

Una multitud de gente común —“los viejos cien apellidos”, como se dice en la jerga china—, salieron a las calles para expresar su frustración con los confinamientos represivos por la covid y, de manera implícita, con la represión general en el país. Muchos manifestantes alzaron hojas de papel en blanco, que significa que no podían decir lo que querían decir.

Xi, sin embargo, interpretó esas hojas en blanco.…  Seguir leyendo »

Un trabajador sanitario en un barrio de Shanghái en confinamiento. The New York Times

Los líderes de China están ante un dilema peligroso. Su obsesión por eliminar el coronavirus ha evitado que el país tenga las tasas pandémicas de mortalidad sufridas por otros países grandes, pero a un costo muy alto: el grave daño social y económico que condujo el pasado fin de semana a las protestas más grandes contra el gobierno en varias décadas.

La severa política de tolerancia cero contra la covid impulsada por el presidente Xi Jinping ya no es sostenible, y este se enfrenta a la difícil disyuntiva entre suavizar las restricciones, lo que podría provocar muertes en masa, y mantener un enfoque impopular que está llevando a la sociedad China al límite.…  Seguir leyendo »

A quarantine worker in a neighborhood in Shanghai under lockdown. The New York Times

China’s leaders are in a dangerous dilemma. Their obsession with eliminating the coronavirus has spared the country the pandemic death rates suffered by other major countries, but at a steep cost: severe social and economic pain that led last weekend to China’s biggest anti-government protests in decades.

The harsh zero-tolerance Covid policy championed by President Xi Jinping is no longer sustainable, and he faces a difficult choice between easing up on Covid restrictions, which could cause mass deaths, or clinging to an unpopular approach that is pushing Chinese society to a breaking point.

The government, apparently spooked by the rare demonstrations that took place in several cities, may be losing its resolve.…  Seguir leyendo »

The centralisation of political power in China allows the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to tightly control society. In the past week demonstrations over President Xi Jinping’s “zero-covid” policy in cities across the country, involving people from a variety of backgrounds, came as a surprise. That is probably because citizens rarely protest against government measures in this way; simultaneous national resistance to them is less common even than in other autocratic states, such as Russia. The party learned tough lessons in Tiananmen Square in 1989. It has since meticulously designed a system that can pre-empt major protests before they occur.

One part of the system relies on technology.…  Seguir leyendo »

The sudden eruption of anti-lockdown protests across China in the past week caught its leaders—and the world—by surprise. The first demonstrations took place in Xinjiang and Shanghai and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which has crushed countless mass protests in the past with ruthless efficiency, scrambled to respond.

Chinese authorities have now adopted a mixed approach to curb the demonstrations. It combines an increased police presence and intimidation of protesters with promises of more refined implementation of the government’s “zero-covid” policy—which remains unchanged. Whatever the immediate outcomes of the protests, which now appear to be over, they will probably influence policy for the remainder of President Xi Jinping’s time in power.…  Seguir leyendo »

Protesters in Beijing hold up white pieces of paper during a demonstration against China's zero-Covid measures on November 27. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

It transforms the most powerful man in the country into a teddy bear.

It adds to the calendar the imaginary date of May 35 to invoke a people’s uprising that government censors seek to erase from memory.

It mobilizes the public to expose sexual predators with the unlikely affirmation, “Rice Bunny!”

We refer, of course, to a quality as widespread among China’s people as it is absent among its leaders – comic ingenuity.

May 35 stands in for “June 4”, Chinese shorthand for the 1989 massacre commonly known in English as “Tiananmen”, and a phrase the People’s Republic of China censors have tried to scrub from the internet.…  Seguir leyendo »

Xi Broke the Social Contract That Helped China Prosper

The protests in China against the government’s draconian Covid controls have been compared to those in 1989, when students demonstrated for political reforms and democracy. The 1989 pro-democracy movement occurred in the most liberal, tolerant and enlightening period in the history of the People’s Republic of China, and the regime opened fire in Tiananmen Square — after the ouster of the liberal leader, Zhao Ziyang — because it had run out of every other control tool in its possession. This is called the Tocqueville paradox: An autocracy is most vulnerable when it is least autocratic.

But a closer analogy is April 5, 1976.…  Seguir leyendo »

Chinese students protesting the repressive Covid policies. Jerome Favre/EPA, via Shutterstock

The scenes in China in recent days have been electrifying.

Last weekend, in several cities across the country, from cosmopolitan Shanghai to far-western Xinjiang, ordinary people took to the streets to denounce the government’s stifling Covid-19 suppression policy and in some cases call for democracy and freedom of speech.

The sudden release of nearly three years of pent-up frustration over the excessive Covid measures — which have disrupted lives, separated families and crippled the economy — is the largest anti-government outburst since the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations centered on Tiananmen Square. Again, the odds are against the protesters. The Chinese Communist Party, which completely controls the country, has moved quickly to suppress it.…  Seguir leyendo »