Xi is caught in a policy trap he set for himself

In chess, when a move is necessary but every option makes the situation worse, players are said to be in zugzwang. Chinese leader Xi Jinping — juggling purported efforts to ease pandemic measures, surging Covid infections and inadequate vaccination rates, plus angry protests, a faltering economy and an approaching winter — appears to find himself in political zugzwang.

Extracting the world's most populous nation and the second-largest economy from Covid Zero after three years is both possible and necessary, but it's also a test of the government's flexibility and responsiveness, and China isn't passing with flying colors. That should worry, as Beijing's ability to reset public health policies will also be a crucial indication of how well an increasingly tightly controlled and centralized system will unpick other tangles — social, economic, environmental or geopolitical — that require just such pragmatism.

Governments globally have struggled to adapt to an evolving pandemic picture. But course-correction is far harder for rigid authoritarian systems like China's, which find it easier to impose intrusive and draconian rules than to lift them. Growing popular fury fueled by last week's deadly fire in a high-rise building in Urumqi, capital of the far western Xinjiang region, has just made a nuanced approach even tougher.

Investors, it's abundantly clear, are desperate for China to ease its Covid policies. Every hint of loosening, truth or rumor, has been met with euphoria in the market. And no wonder, given the country is expected to have expanded a mere 3.3% in 2022 according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg, one of the weakest levels in recent decades.

China's population, meanwhile, is weary, even if fear of the disease persists thanks to three years of heavy-handed propaganda, and that frustration is becoming increasingly hard to contain. Take the hundreds of workers at Apple Inc.'s main iPhone-making plant who clashed with hazmat-clad guards after weeks of harsh restrictions. Or the crowds in Shanghai, Beijing and elsewhere in China over the weekend, some holding blank pages in protest and chanting anti-government slogans after the Xinjiang blaze rekindled anger over excessively stringent lockdowns that result in avoidable tragedies —  all the more remarkable given the taboo around the longstanding repression of the region's Uyghur Muslims.

Having bet on restrictions to avoid the chaos of surging cases, Xi now faces anger anyway, largely because of those very controls.

To officials' credit, China had earlier this month begun talking about moves in the right direction, a pull back on everything from quarantine to mass testing, while planning to promote vaccine use and preparing to treat Covid, not just keep it out. 

But now infections are on the rise, it's lockdowns and heavy-handed enforcers in protective suits known as "big whites" that are in evidence — not vaccination or information campaigns.

Close to 90% of Chinese over 60 are fully vaccinated. Still, in mid-November only just under 70% of the age group had received the third dose recommended by the World Health Organization when it comes to inactivated vaccines like those produced by China, and that number fell to 40% for those over 80, admittedly a small cohort. A swift reopening would almost certainly cause a surge in cases that China is not equipped to manage, especially outside big cities. In the first six months of the omicron outbreak, around one-quarter of people in the US and Europe were infected — Bloomberg Intelligence calculates that implies China would see to about 363 million infections. 

That's about the entire population of Germany, France, Britain, Spain, Italy and the Benelux countries, a vast number even given the country's population. In China, with an official death toll of just over 5,200, it's unthinkable.

All of this is painfully challenging for Xi, who has repeatedly equated Covid Zero (and China's vaccines) with national success. The omicron variant is challenging to contain, not to mention expensive and disruptive, and as epidemiologist Ben Cowling at the University of Hong Kong points out, managing it requires a plan. Without one, China risks repeating on a far larger scale what Hong Kong saw, when infections surged earlier this year before the territory was ready, and hospitals buckled. That's quite a blunder to explain to a population that has endured enormous personal hardship to avoid just that.

In times gone by, China might have considered emulating Singapore, a model on a tiny canvas. The city-state vaccinated, prepared hospitals, provided information and opened — gradually but surely — keeping fatalities low. Not a bad route map. But today Singapore is seen as not only too small, but too open to be a model when it comes to Covid. Plus, it relied on Western mRNA vaccines.

The first question today is whether science, economics and the anger of China's people trump the political imperative. That's not yet happening.

The second question is how local governments will cope. For months, officials have been incentivized only to clamp down on cases — to the point that vast numbers were bused into quarantine to keep "the spread in the community" low. There are countless tales of overabundant zeal. But now, as Chen Gang at the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore put it to me, officials on the ground are responding to confusing signals. There may be high-level talk of easing, but their incentives have not changed. 

At the start of the pandemic, authoritarian systems like China were hailed in some quarters as excelling in infection control. They could, it seems, build hospitals in days when the West struggled to get citizens to wear masks. But pandemics are marathons, not sprints. The most successful governments have been those able and willing to change track. The same very characteristic that determines success elsewhere.

The world should hope for success in China. Failure is too devastating to contemplate.

But the risk is still that the deadly quarantine bus crash that infuriated citizens in September becomes a metaphor for the nation. The driver was wearing full protective clothing when transporting a group to a quarantine center at close to three in the morning. The bus overturned on a mountain road most likely because he couldn't see clearly enough to drive, but had stuck to his orders. 

"We're all on the bus," one Chinese social media user said at the time. "We just haven't crashed yet."

Clara Ferreira Marques is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and editorial board member covering foreign affairs and climate. Previously, she worked for Reuters in Hong Kong, Singapore, India, the U.K., Italy and Russia. @ClaraDFMarques

Disclaimer: This article first appeared on Bloomberg, and is published by special syndication arrangement.