China’s martial rhetoric will not help it defeat covid

IN THE EARLY days of the pandemic Xi Jinping, China’s leader, suggested that the country was under attack. He spoke of a “people’s war” against an “invisible enemy”. Visiting Wuhan, the city where it started, he all but promised victory. Fang Fang, a local diarist, retorted: “Remember, there is no win, only an end.”

Most countries have accepted that covid cannot be eradicated. Helped by vaccines and treatments, they have decided to live with the virus. China, however, is still determined to defeat or at least contain it. The discovery of dozens of cases in Beijing has led to mass-testing (see China section). Individual neighbourhoods are being locked down. This is less harsh than the medicine applied to poorer cities, dozens of which have been entirely sealed off. Still, Beijing could be next.