Thousands of members of China’s political elite converge in Beijing each year for the “two sessions”, the country’s biggest annual political meetings. In the second in a series of stories on this year’s agenda, we look at whether China’s ‘dynamic zero-Covid strategy’ is likely to change. Just weeks before the opening of the annual “ two sessions ”, Beijing hosted the Winter Olympics in a bubble with not reports of coronavirus transmissions from inside the loop to the outside, and vice versa. China hailed the model a success and said it would use it again during the Winter Paralympics and the two sessions, which are being held concurrently. Analysts said the Winter Olympics had not only burnished China’s international reputation but also boosted its confidence in using strict measures to achieve “ dynamic clearing of Covid-19 ”. It is doubling down on the approach, applying it in Hong Kong to contain a runaway outbreak there. Despite this, two years of mass screening, intrusive contact tracing, and repeated lockdowns have taken their toll and China is looking for a way out while keeping political and social risks to a minimum. China is the only country in the world still determined to contain the coronavirus, in contrast with other countries that are seeking to mitigate the damage of the virus and try to live with it. Britain and Sweden, for example, have removed or are planning to remove all Covid-19 restrictions and scale back tests. On Friday ahead of the annual session for the National People’s Congress (NPC), NPC spokesman Zhang Yesui said China would hold onto its zero-Covid policy. “The impact on daily life caused by the pandemic control measures is temporary and limited. The measures guarantee normal life and production for most people in most areas,” Zhang said. “The ‘dynamic zero-Covid’ policy is the right approach and has good results.” Official defends China’s zero-Covid policy amid calls for it to be eased However, as thousands of NPC deputies and members of the top advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) gather in the capital, China’s success in keeping coronavirus cases low is being overshadowed by a massive outbreak in Hong Kong. The outbreak means half of Hong Kong’s NPC deputies would be absent from the annual meeting, with some stranded in Shenzhen and unable to fly to Beijing. Until the outbreak, Hong Kong had kept cases low by quarantining travellers and locking down and testing residents of entire buildings once local cases were found. But cases went undetected, erupting in a fifth wave that since December 31 has grown to roughly 390,000 cases, according to the Hong Kong government. Beijing is hoping universal testing in the city of 7 million can help bring down the number. However, its effectiveness in a crowded city without the necessary isolation facilities remains unclear. For Beijing, there is a strong incentive to quash the outbreak in Hong Kong, instead of following the Western of trying to live with the virus, according to Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations. “If you have this rapid spread of the virus in the city, it poses a significantly increased risk that Covid may be spreading beyond the Hong Kong border to mainland China,” Huang said. Alfred Wu, associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, said Beijing would want to prove that it could contain the outbreak by using its methods. “The Chinese government has treated all these fights against Covid-19 as a kind of political achievement. Political achievement means a political show. So if the situation looks severe, but finally they are able to crack down, to some extent, it actually boosts China’s image,” Wu said. But Beijing is eager to find a way out, with the first sign coming from Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. “We are facing two choices, whether to retain the existing control and prevention measures or to continue to improve the measures,” Wu told a forum in mid-February. “We have many teams studying how to improve these measures. Once that is done, the approach will not be the same as dynamic zero but neither will it be inaction,” he said referring to the idea of living with the virus. He said the government hoped the new approach could protect lives while also maintaining normal international interaction and economic development. But so far there appears to be no agreement on how this can be achieved. “We are still contemplating and devising the strategy,” he said. We are facing two choices, whether to retain the existing control and prevention measures or to continue to improve the measures Wu Zunyou, China CDC Former China CDC chief scientist Zeng Guang also signalled desire for change with a post on his microblog late last month saying China might integrate the advantages of different approaches in China and the West to come up with its own way of coexistence. “In the foreseeable future, when the time is appropriate, China will show its own road map to coexist with the virus,” he wrote. But the mounting number of cases in Hong Kong could delay that easing in restrictions, posing a worrying challenge to small businesses and trade-dependent firms, according to Xu Hongcai, deputy director of the economic policy commission under the China Association of Policy Science. “I’m concerned that after seeing the situation [in Hong Kong], the mainland will not dare [to ease restrictions] – and that would be troublesome,” Xu said. “In terms of small businesses, self-employed people in the catering business will be directly impacted, which will eventually affect employment and consumption.” He said the pressure on the supply chain due to the strict control measures would also pose great challenges to Chinese trading companies this year. “China might fall into the status of a lonely island when other countries are lifting Covid-19 restrictions,” Xu said. To prepare for a relaxation, China has been trying to improve its immunisation programme, including by mixing and matching vaccines. Yet, China has not yet approved a mRNA vaccine by German company BioNTech despite an application filed months ago. And China cannot count on securing supplies of Pfizer’s antiviral drug Paxlovid despite giving it the green light. “The demand for that drug is so high that there’s a shortage of supply even in the United States. Unless Beijing is authorised to mass manufacture the drugs, don’t expect Chinese people will have access to the drug any time soon,” Huang said. Wu, from the National University of Singapore, said President Xi Jinping would not take any risk before his third term as Communist Party boss began later this year. “As long as Xi’s third term has not been confirmed, he will not allow the country to make any big change, because he may face some unpredictable outcome,” Wu said. “So the very optimistic timeline will be after the party’s national congress this year or even the National People’s Congress next year,” he said, adding that many factors such as new variants could alter the time frame. Additional reporting by Orange Wang