Xi Jinping’s zero-covid policy has turned a health crisis into a political one

CHINA INVENTED covid-19 lockdowns. During the first weeks of the pandemic, the government of Xi Jinping corralled tens of millions of people to stop the disease spreading out of Wuhan. Almost three years later, lockdowns have become China’s undoing. A combination of protests and rising cases means that Mr Xi will have to navigate between mass lockdowns and mass infection—and possibly end up with both. The coming months will pose the biggest threat to his rule since he came to power in 2012 and the biggest threat to the authority of the Communist Party since the protests around Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Sporadic local pickets are common in China. But demonstrations erupted across the country after at least ten people died in a fire in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang, where residents were allegedly sealed in a building because of covid. Last weekend in Beijing protesters called for “freedom”; in Shanghai they demanded that Mr Xi step down. The crowds were small, but in a place as heavily policed as China it is remarkable they ever formed.