Hello and welcome to What China Wants.
Just three months ago in the West, Covid was still dominating the headlines even after two years. Yet since the end of February and the invasion of Ukraine there has been barely a mention, reflective of both governments and the public moving on despite infection rates remaining stubbornly high.
Not so in China. Shanghai, its most important city, is under a harsh Covid lockdown with no end in sight. Given Shanghai’s role in the world economy this is a problem for far more than just those unfortunately enough to be caught up in the lockdown. In today’s newsletter I’ll explore some of the reasons that are being used to explain why the measures are being taken (whatever the CCP say), and what this means for the world.
As always thanks for your likes, comments, and shares, and I’ll be back next week.
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For the last four weeks or so the 25 million people of Shanghai have experienced one of the world’s tightest Covid-related lockdowns. Working from home is mandatory, public transportation and car-hailing services are suspended, and people are even being sealed into their flats to stop them leaving.
The strength of the measures appear to be taking a heavy mental toll, if a recently released video is anything to go by. “Voices of April” is a six-minute montage of audio snippets of both official announcements and anguished complaints by the city’s residents, and is full of heartrending suffering: a cancer patient not allowed back home after treatment; volunteer delivery drivers begging for food and water; a dog beaten to death after its owner turned positive with Covid.
The question is, why? Governments the world over have moved to a new stage with their Covid reaction, one that emphasises learning to live with the virus. Not, however, the People’s Republic, and especially not Shanghai.
The official reason for the lockdown is to stop the spread of Covid. But as always in China, there are other reasons floating just below the surface. In fact, there are four main hypotheses as to why this is happening.
The first is straightforward: it is an internal power struggle. Ever since Xi Jinping took over from Jiang Zemin as leader of China, he has been beset by the remnants of the what is called the “Shanghai clique”, those CCP officials who came to prominence under Jiang and who remain somewhat untamed by the current regime. Shanghai as a city also has a long-standing reputation of being slightly apart from Beijing’s control, a sentiment that reaches back to colonial times.
As the power struggle argument goes, the restrictions in Shanghai are intended to be a power play to show that the central leadership trumps regionalism and factionalism. This is an important stance to take ahead of this autumn’s 20th Party Congress, when Xi is expected to be ordained as leader for life – a development which will a great deal easier to achieve with his main rivals spiked by lockdown.
Whilst this theory has the merit of reflecting the internal divisions within the CCP, the counterargument is that the lockdown is equally strong in other parts of the country, including areas that are supportive of Xi. This has led some to postulate that there is another stratagem at play, one that is much more worrying for anyone with a memory of the Cultural Revolution: namely, that the restrictions mark a return to the use of political campaigns.
Chairman Mao didn’t shy away from bypassing government bureaucracy to get what he wanted. His rule was marked by a number of campaigns that saw the mobilisation of swathes of the country in order to achieve his political aims. Some of these campaigns have become bywords for viciousness and death, including the Great Leap Forward of 1958-62 (with perhaps 45 million victims) and the Cultural Revolution, whose body count ranges from the hundreds of thousands to the millions.
Much has been written about how Xi wants to emulate Mao, but it is possibly a bit of a stretch to say that this includes unleashing mass political violence. For a start, the campaigns of Mao had a nasty habit of getting completely out of control, as the people on the ground pushed and pushed to impress their superiors with their righteousness of cause. It is unlikely that Xi, who was himself impacted by the Cultural Revolution and who stresses order above almost anything else, would purposefully unleash a similar type of campaign.
The third hypothesis doing the rounds is also sinister, at least from a non-Chinese perspective. There is a suggestion that the leadership is using the Shanghai lockdown as a stress test in case war breaks out over Taiwan. If Shanghai can withstand this hardship, so the theory goes, then there is every chance it will be able to stand up to the Western sanctions that are likely to come in the event of a move across the Taiwan Strait. Not only that, but the restrictions are providing the authorities with a better idea of resource allocation and logistical arrangements in a state of emergency.
This is all theoretically possible, but there is no evidence to suggest that the CCP has planned this. If they had, it would be far more likely to involve more than just Shanghai, and would have some kind of patriotic messaging attached.
What is far more likely is the fourth hypothesis.
China spent much of the early months of Covid promising that it would provide a vaccine to the world, and it was true to its word with the release vaccines like Sinovac and CoronaVac. The problem is, they don’t work particularly well. According to the World Health Organisation, the Sinovac vaccine “prevented symptomatic disease in 51% of those vaccinated”, compared to 95% for the Moderna one. So, the measures in Shanghai might be a way of covering up the vaccine’s weaknesses to save face. More importantly, they can maintain the image that Xi has triumphed by having low mortality rates.
Many of the China analysts I speak to think this last, vaccine related hypothesis the most likely, but in reality nobody outside Xi’s inner circle knows for sure.
What is more certain is that there will be repercussions from this that spread far and wide from China’s borders. Shanghai is hugely important for China’s economy, representing 3% of the country’s GDP and more than 10% of China’s total trade since 2018. With China responsible for over a quarter of global manufacturing output and a key node in supply chains of all types, the restrictions placed on the logistical infrastructure of one of its centres for trade, finance, and business will certainly have a global impact. Whilst commentators have focused on the 500 or so ships that are currently waiting to use Shanghai’s port facilities, ports in Europe and America are bulging with goods that are caught in the logistics logjam caused by the lockdown. This will have a measurable impact on the economies of those countries, as the last few years of Covid have repeatedly shown.
The situation in Shanghai is entirely government made, and is undoubtedly causing suffering on immense scale. But as has become increasingly apparent over the last decade, when China sneezes the world catches a cold. The CCP’s actions in Shanghai should be of interest to us all, and not just for basic humanitarian reasons.
I asked a Chinese colleague a couple of weeks ago about the reasoning behind for the harsh, extensive lock-down and she suggested your third hypothesis. She also said that amongst her family and friends in China, there is absolutely no doubt that Taiwan should - and will - become part of the PRC.
Occam’s razor at play?