With President Xi Jinping focused on maintaining stability as he seeks to secure an unprecedented third term this autumn, China has remained steadfast to zero-Covid policy adherence. Authorities moved quickly to contain an outbreak in Beijing after Covid-19 cases rose over the weekend, having seen the effects of a delayed response in Shanghai. From Thursday, the end of a five-day Labour Day holiday, residents will have to provide proof of a negative PCR test result taken in the last seven days to use public transport and enter office buildings, entertainment venues and sports facilities. Still, there are other elements of China’s policy implementation that should provide lessons for the future – and will create challenges for Xi in the present. First, the inflexibility of Covid-19 policy implementation at a local level has narrowed the central authority’s breadth of governance. Although the Shanghai government assured residents of its efforts to minimise the impact of the pandemic on the economy and society, and that medical and basic living demands would be met, the gap left by food supply disruptions and inadequate government support has been filled by bulk-buying and bartering. People with serious diseases have been denied timely and often life-saving hospital treatment due to strict Covid-19 testing rules. Taking policy implementation to such extreme lengths can hardly guarantee minimal economic and social impact. Indeed, fears of food shortages like those in Shanghai have given rise to panic buying in Beijing. A change in approach only came after a backlash from the public, with the Shanghai government stressing that hospitals should not use anti-epidemic measures as an excuse to deny patients emergency treatment. Second, government policy has shifted priority, from livelihood issues to ideology. Although Xi has repeatedly stressed the importance of a “people-first” approach, food shortages and inaccessibility to emergency care are proof of a gap between party will and action. While many internet users have pondered on Weibo whether the zero-Covid policy is more frightening than the virus itself, such narratives have been blocked by authorities and replaced by state media stories of frontline workers combating the pandemic. China’s construction of positive ideology over practical solutions is contradictory to the government’s principle of basing top-level policy and discourse on material needs. Third, the central government’s need for stability has created an imbalance between policy objectives and outcome. Faced with the uncertainty of what might happen should pandemic rules be relaxed, it is sticking with what it sees as the option with the least number of variables. Beijing remain resolute about a stable continuation of power, and this requires the elimination of Covid-19. As such, the desire for stability outweighs and limits the comprehensiveness and flexibility of any policy that might be implemented. While fear of the unknown made the public willing to tolerate strict measures at the start of the pandemic, they now have a much greater awareness of the virus. Moreover, after two years of disruptions to daily life, they have a much lower tolerance for the government’s rigid pandemic response. Such sentiment is reflected in the outpourings online that even internet censors cannot completely eliminate. The conflict between grass-roots citizens and government is intensified by the fact that material needs are not being met. Thus, the contradiction between ideology and reality is inescapable: Xi has repeatedly declared that “the people are the real heroes”, yet the focus on consistency, both in power and policy, has undermined this assertion. The impact of zero-Covid on the economy has also forced China to gradually change its strategy. The national per capita income growth rate, as reported by the National Bureau of Statistics, is a reflection of the impact of pandemic measures on people’s livelihood. While growth hit 13.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2021, it fell to 5.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2022, as the economic fallout of citywide lockdowns spilled over into supply chains and the labour market. Covid lockdowns risk China’s working class, poor ‘falling back into poverty’ This economic pressure has pushed the government to adapt its pandemic narrative, to focus more on early mass testing , rather than local lockdowns. Even so, the battle for zero-Covid is a classic example of how policy can fail in an top-down authoritarianism system. When policy is conveyed down from the central government to local authorities, there is inevitably a narrowing of understanding and implementation once it reaches the grass-roots level, because the pressure from the top prevents local administrations from making free decisions. The result is visible in people’s quality of life. As scholars Jiajian Chen and Qiongwen Zhang, from the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, note , “the tremendous pressure for implementation will stimulate the grass-roots government to employ extraordinary methods to achieve the policy objectives in the form of campaign-style implementation”. The drastic lockdown measures we have seen in Shanghai thus reflect the inescapable link between rigid policy implementation and public sacrifice. While the limits on political expression mean it is unlikely that public discontent will result in protests, the glaring imbalance between efforts to improve quality of life and promote central government ideology and political objectives make it imperative for Xi to solidify his legitimacy once more at this vital time. Jinyuan Li is a research candidate in global affairs at King’s College London