Xi’s Covid Retreat Shows China Masses They Have Real Power
- Communist Party starts dismantling Covid Zero after protests
- China’s citizens have new template to resist Xi’s excesses
This article is for subscribers only.
For months, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s government insisted that his Covid Zero policy would “stand the test of history,” and vowed to punish anyone who questioned the approach.
Yet mere days after spontaneous street protests broke out seeking an end to constant testing and lockdowns, with some taboo-busting demonstrators calling for Xi himself to step down, the Communist Party is swiftly moving to dismantle the core pieces of a strategy that made China a global outlier.