For China’s officials, leaving zero-Covid behind is far harder than enforcing it

The policy, while damaging, came with clear metrics that allowed local government officials to demonstrate their compliance
The new mandate to simply let people get on with their lives leaves officials with no way to show success other than by downplaying the resulting rise in infections

Karman Lucero

Published: 8:15am, 7 Feb 2023

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The abrupt end of China’s harsh zero-Covid policy appears to have surprised even the government officials that executed it. The course of both zero-Covid and its bewildering reversal offer important lessons about the strengths and limits of China’s government.

Typically characterised as highly centralised, China’s government is actually one of the most decentralised governments on earth in terms of regional and local fiscal responsibility. In other words, regional and local governments in China are disproportionately responsible for public expenditures compared with counterparts internationally.

It also makes sense; a country with China’s land mass and large population requires tens of millions of officials to carry out the orders of the centre and respond to problems in real time. There is a well-known Chinese saying: the mountain is high and the emperor far away, that bemoans the lack of state power and challenge of implementing policies in remote areas.

The Chinese Communist Party, and Xi Jinping in particular, have developed tools to move away from this dynamic and ensure compliance with central government policies on a granular level, such as mass mobilisation campaigns that involve a mix of propaganda and the deployment of individuals to carry out different policies.

While such strategies have succeeded when tied to clear metrics of success (such as increasing GDP numbers or keeping Covid-19 cases at zero), they tend to produce more mixed results when the goals are more vague or open-ended. For Chinese government officials, implementing zero-Covid appears to have been easier than coming out of it.

One key reason for this is the role that metrics play in demonstrating enforcement. Metrics are key to policy success and governance generally in China. While internationally China’s central government has developed a reputation for politically motivated and otherwise unreliable statistics, metrics serve as a primary method for the central government to monitor and rate local governments.

Officials stand outside a residential compound placed under lockdown in Beijing on November 7, 2022. Photo: Reuters

Particularly after the devastation of Mao-era policies, metrics have also served as an objective check on ideological excess and a means for local government officials to compete with each other.

A Chinese government report published by state media Xinhua outlines the country’s new direction of “Category B infectious disease and management”, denoting a shift in approach in the face of less severe Covid variants.

The report details multiple elements of the new, post zero-Covid paradigm, including eliminating quarantines, a focus on drug development, and the use of traditional Chinese medicine to treat Covid-19. It also explains how to prioritise who gets treatment first, and details the importance of “building consensus”.

Zero-Covid was an excellent policy for China’s political system. Lockdowns often required granular enforcement and the mass involvement of individuals at all levels of government. Each official had the opportunity to demonstrate their own loyalty to the policy, and its primary enforcer, Xi Jinping, by energetically or even viciously enforcing lockdowns and quarantines.

Zero-Covid also involved the use of clear metrics: the number of cases, the number of tests, the number of quarantine facilities built, and so on. Local government officials competed with each other to keep case numbers low, and the central government could similarly monitor the compliance of various local governments.

A woman takes a PCR test at a street medical booth in Shanghai, China, on September 12, 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE

Post zero-Covid “Category B”, however, has proved more complicated. The incentives of local government officials change, but while complying with zero-Covid involved clear metrics and mobilisation, the new requirements are more confusing.

How do local officials demonstrate compliance? What does it mean to enthusiastically not lock down a city or quarantine people? How does a government infrastructure built around control and micromanagement repurpose itself to encourage people to live their lives again?

Many government officials have responded by dropping zero-Covid controls overnight. Beyond that, there is no unified picture as to what they are supposed to do.

Likewise, what are the correct metrics to measure a successful exit from zero-Covid? Rises in the number of cases and deaths, while bad, are now deemed inevitable. Yet the lack of clear metrics of success has led to the politicisation of numbers of Covid deaths; local governments have no way to show compliance, but they can still try and lessen negative appearances, even if by cover-up.

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Throughout December, Covid-19 deaths in China measured in the 10s, and even then, only after high-profile deaths could not be ignored. On January 14, the government released data citing about 60,000 deaths, a number that is still questionable as it appears to only report hospital deaths. Even these may be under-reported due to doctors at hospitals being asked to avoid listing Covid-19 as the cause of death. Those that question the 60,000 number are also censored online.

The overnight reversal and ending of zero-Covid reveals another limit of government capacity in China: the cold, hard reality of costs. Zero-Covid was growing unsustainably expensive, even for wealthier provincial governments in China.

According to the Financial Times, zero-Covid cost China about US$52 billion in 2022. Of course, the policy was also adversely affecting China’s economy more broadly. The People’s Daily, an official government newspaper, admitted that costs had become too high.

Zero-Covid involved an awesome display of government power. “Category B” is demonstrating the real limits of that same power. Zero-Covid presented an image of excess, but it also made it difficult to argue against the sheer capacity of the Chinese government to influence and control its people.

The messy roll-out of “Category B” adds more than a few cracks to this illusory image of omnipotence. In some ways, modern governance tools and technologies have expanded the Communist Party’s power beyond that of any dynasty. In other ways, however, the complexities of modern challenges and the diversity of modern societies make the emperor farther away than ever.

Karman Lucero is a fellow at the Paul Tsai China Centre at Yale Law School