Xi Jinping’s double impasse between covid and the war in Ukraine – Pierre Haski

The Chinese government of Xi Jinping is grappling with two simultaneous challenges of a different nature: the war in Ukraine and the return of covid-19. In both cases, Beijing finds itself in an impasse. A regime whose adaptability has been cited so often to explain its survival, where so many other Communist parties have collapsed, today proves unable to change course. And so surprising criticisms begin to arrive.

The two themes clearly have a different nature. Covid-19 has been an extremely sensitive topic since its emergence in Wuhan just over two years ago. The Communist Party of China has chosen the “zero covid” strategy – contrary to most governments in the world, which have resigned themselves to “living with the virus” by relying on mass vaccination – and has presented its apparent success in containing the epidemic on its huge territory as the “scientific” proof of the superiority of its political system over that of the West, where the number of registered victims is infinitely higher than in China (according to official figures, of course).

But the omicron variant has changed everything: much more contagious than the others, it has forced the Chinese authorities to isolate tens of millions of inhabitants even in the event of a limited number of infections. In Shanghai 26 million people are in isolation, with a rigidity that has upset the political class of a metropolis that was believed to be a showcase of modern China. The human, economic and political consequences are enormous, especially since Beijing, a theoretically “inviolable” capital, risks suffering the same fate.

Objectives under discussion
The Russian invasion of Ukraine raises other questions. China has shown relative restraint by abstaining from the United Nations rather than openly supporting Moscow, and is trying not to become a sideline to Western sanctions by helping Russia circumvent them. However, the Chinese propaganda organs have been broadcasting Russia’s anti-American rhetoric for weeks, even conveying large disinformation operations such as the one that claims the existence of US-developed biological warfare laboratories in Ukraine. No doubt Beijing thought (like so many others) that the war would quickly end with a victory for Russia and that the world economic and diplomatic disturbance would be transient. It was not so. Today the Chinese regime finds itself grappling with an unforeseen world crisis which, combined with the effects of covid-19, calls into question its sacred objectives of economic growth.

This particularly difficult context has prompted usually conciliatory figures to decisively express their disagreement. It is an unexpected development, also because there are only a few months left for the fundamental congress of the Communist Party scheduled for October and the criticisms will neither be forgiven nor forgotten. The first news is the stance of Weijian Shan, a manager of an investment fund and in the past, as the Financial Times recalls, aligned with the government regarding the treatment of Uighurs, the claims on Taiwan and the management of covid-19. However, in a meeting with a group of investors in Hong Kong (which should not have been made public but ultimately made headlines around the world), Weijian Shan said: “We have a leadership that believes it knows. what is best for the economy and for people’s lives. Unfortunately, I am convinced that their knowledge and reasoning have limits ”. These words may sound trivial to Western ears, but in China they are explosive.

The second attack, even more explicit, was aimed directly at Xi Jinping, the untouchable number one, the “president of everything”, as he is nicknamed on social networks. The criticism, in this case, comes from a foreigner, Joerg Wuttke, president of the powerful European Chamber of Commerce in China, a German entrepreneur who has lived and worked in China for thirty years and therefore does not speak lightly or without knowing what. exposes itself. In an interview granted to the business magazine The Market, Wuttke paints a catastrophic panorama of the consequences of the “zero covid” policy, adding that “in private meetings, particularly in the ministries that manage the economy, I meet well-informed and open-minded executives. The problem is that they cannot use their knowledge to change politics. Until the twentieth congress of the party they will have to stick to the ‘zero covid’ policy. Xi wants to be confirmed for a third term, so right now he can’t change his claims about him. But the president finds himself in a double impasse: he cannot change his covid policy and he cannot cancel his friendship with Vladimir Putin ”.

According to the German businessman, the economic consequences of these two simultaneous crises will be considerable: the hundreds of containers blocked off Shanghai announce serious shortages in the coming weeks, in Europe and elsewhere. Many factories are at a standstill, while some municipal administrations prevent access to trucks from other cities, because one case of covid-19 is enough to stake one’s career. Meanwhile, several companies are rushing to relocate production to other Asian countries to respond to customer requests, even accepting a price increase. All this, continues Wuttke, would have been avoidable if China had changed its anti-virus strategy as other Asian countries that had long followed the strict Chinese approach have done. Beijing leaders note that the country has a much larger population, a more precarious hospital system and a weak vaccination rate. But it is undeniable that all of this is the result of political choices that cannot be publicly discussed.

Also with regard to Ukraine, the president of the Chamber of Commerce (which includes thousands of companies from the old continent) underlines some problematic realities: “It seems to me that the members of the management in Beijing do not understand why the war and the proximity between the China and Putin cause great stress in European companies. They do not understand what the effects of Putin’s war are on European companies, just as they do not realize that from the Western point of view there is a link between Ukraine and Taiwan. This relationship may not exist – I personally think Chinese leaders know that an invasion of Taiwan would undoubtedly be more complicated than they previously thought – but the government doesn’t understand that Western companies think of a scenario where, if Beijing were to conquer Taiwan by force, they may be forced to leave China in the same way they are leaving Russia. The result is the same as we have seen with the covid-19 policy: foreign companies push the ‘pause’ button. Any new investment is temporarily suspended “.

Of course, it must be emphasized that these voices are raised only when their direct interests are at stake due to isolation or war and never for ethical reasons with respect to the fate of the Uighurs or to authoritarian drifts. But the fact remains that criticism of this type had never been heard after the advent of Xi Jinping. If we take into account that powerful men like Jack Ma, the founder of the Alibaba group and richest man in China, have been “punished” for much lighter criticism, we can get an idea of ​​the current climate in China.

All this, however, does not mean that Xi Jinping risks anything immediately or that the 20th Party Congress will be particularly complicated for him. That’s not how China works. However, some warning lights have been lit in a country that thought it was ready to dominate the world and that instead finds itself weakened by two factors it cannot control: the virus and Putin. It may seem like a recent development compared to the drama of the war in Ukraine, but it can have an enormous weight in the definition of the new world that will inevitably emerge from the current phase of recomposition.

(Translation by Andrea Sparacino)