Xi Faces More Doubts Within China as Global Problems Mount
- Chinese leader’s most urgent priority is to regain lost trust
- Cosmopolitan Shanghai offers window on the scale of challenge
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As Xi Jinping prepares to begin his second decade as China’s president, he’s facing a new phenomenon: A much more skeptical public.
The abrupt end to some of the world’s strictest Covid controls following rare protests against Xi and the Communist Party in late November led to a wave of sickness and death across the world’s second-biggest economy, overwhelming hospitals and crematoriums. Although Chinese officials declared a “decisive victory” over the virus in February for the second time, the long-term political consequences for Xi remain unclear.