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China Protests Over ‘Zero Covid’ Follow Months of Economic Pain

President Xi Jinping’s unbending approach to the pandemic has hurt businesses and strangled growth, squeezing the world’s second-largest economy.Give this article

Police presence was heavy on Sunday in an area of Shanghai where protesters had gathered the night before.Credit...The New York Times

By Daisuke Wakabayashi, Olivia Wang and Joy Dong

Nov. 29, 2022Updated 6:30 a.m. ET

The toll of China’s unwavering approach to fighting Covid has rippled through the world’s second-largest economy for months: Youth unemployment reached a record 20 percent, corporate profits sagged, and economic growth fell well below Beijing’s own projections.

The economic pain has intensified the pressure to ease pandemic restrictions to salvage the flagging economy and restore some semblance of normal life. Frustration with the government’s zero-tolerance Covid strategy, which has failed to prevent a big jump in cases, escalated over the weekend as a population tired of unpredictable lockdowns, extended quarantines and mass testing erupted into protests. Smaller, scattered demonstrations continued on Monday.

The current Covid outbreak, the most widespread since the start of the pandemic in 2020, has painted Xi Jinping, China’s president, into a corner. He has refused to budge on the government’s strict Covid approach. If he loosens restrictions and infections skyrocket, there is the risk of mass casualties and an overwhelmed health care system. But keeping the current policies in place and limiting infections with widespread lockdowns would inflict further damage to an already slowing economy.

“The government has no good options at this point,” said Mark Williams, chief Asia economist for Capital Economics, a research firm. “Whatever they do, it’s hard to see how there won’t be significant restrictions imposed across large parts of the country, which is going to have a huge impact on weakening the economy.”

More than 80 cities in China are now battling infections compared with 50 cities in the spring, when a smaller surge of infections prompted an eight-week lockdown in Shanghai and set the economy on its slowest pace of annual growth in decades. These cities account for half of China’s economic activity and ship 90 percent of its exports, according to Capital Economics.

Earlier this month, China announced plans to ease some pandemic policies, fueling speculation that it was the beginning of a transition to phase out its “zero-Covid” policy, much to the delight of investors who sent shares of Chinese companies soaring. But as the number of infections rose, the government reverted to a familiar playbook and held firm to what it has said all along: China is trying to eradicate Covid, not learning to live with it.

In a series of editorials in state media starting on Sunday, Beijing said that China still needed to “maintain strategic focus” in combating Covid, but it urged officials around the country to avoid extreme measures such as blocking fire exits or barricading communal doors during quarantine. It stressed the need for local officials to adhere to policy tweaks meant to “optimize” existing Covid policies and limit disruptions to people and businesses.

Even so, the authorities on Monday night deployed additional security to discourage another night of protests.

The growing unrest has threatened to jeopardize China’s hard-earned reputation as the world’s factory floor. Last week, workers upset about unpaid Covid bonuses and poor quarantine protocols rioted and clashed with police at a Chinese factory where Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn produces more than half of the world’s iPhones.

Andrew Fennell, an analyst who oversees China’s government credit ratings for Fitch, said the country’s uncompromising approach has “weighed heavily on the economy and elevated social tensions.” He said that he expects Beijing to relax the most restrictive measures under its zero-tolerance approach, such as citywide lockdowns, in 2023, but that many restrictions will remain in place because of relatively low vaccination rates among the elderly in China.

In a reflection of those low rates, China said on Tuesday that it would increase efforts to vaccinate its oldest citizens, a move experts see as a crucial precursor to reopening the economy.

Goldman Sachs estimated in a note on Monday that there was a 30 percent chance that China would abandon “zero Covid” before April as the central government is forced to “choose between more lockdowns and more Covid outbreaks.”

After the initial outbreak of Covid in 2020, China’s economy bounced back quickly. While the rest of the world remained in lockdown, China’s hard-line approach to keeping the coronavirus in check worked well and its economy roared to life. In particular, exports were a bright spot as Chinese factories manufactured many of the products that the rest of the world bought online during isolation. Last year, China’s economy grew by an impressive 8 percent.

Currently, many of China’s biggest trading partners are staring at a possible recession from runaway inflation, rising interest rates, and the war in Ukraine. Domestically, the usually reliable pillars of real estate and high technology have fallen on hard times, and making more credit available to businesses has not jumpstarted the economy.

For small businesses, the recent outbreak is already sapping demand.

Cai Zhikang, a cake shop owner in Shenzhen, said corporate customers, the main source of his business, are starting to cancel orders more frequently. He said that a customer had scrapped a large corporate catering order exceeding $500 on Monday, a day after residents in the city in southeastern China staged a protest there over some of the latest restrictions.

Mr. Cai, 28, said that each wave of infections had brought more austerity from corporate customers who cut back on spending for employee treats to preserve their budgets. He said that he was also forced to close his shop for a month when Shenzhen imposed restrictions on the park where he operates his store. There is no point, he added, in planning ahead anymore because everything is dependent on whether Covid is spreading or not.

“If there is no Covid, I can definitely earn. When there is Covid, I cannot,” Mr. Cai said.

The impact has also spread to larger companies. A decline in overall profits at China’s industrial firms accelerated in October, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. Profit in China’s 41 industrial sectors fell by 3 percent in the January to October period, a steeper decline compared with a 2.3 percent slide in January to September, numbers released on Sunday indicate.

China’s initial success in containing Covid started to crumble this year with the spread of the more infectious Omicron variant. The government projected a modest 5.5 percent growth for 2022 in March, several weeks before a sharp rise in infections pushed Shanghai into lockdown and brought the economy to a grinding halt. A series of smaller subsequent outbreaks has continued to test the limits of China’s zero-tolerance strategy, putting the government’s economic growth target out of reach.

On Monday, Nomura, a Japanese brokerage, cut its forecast for fourth-quarter economic growth to 2.4 percent from an earlier estimate of 2.8 percent, citing “a slow, painful and bumpy road to reopening.” It also lowered its gross domestic product prediction for 2023 to a 4 percent increase from a previous estimate of 4.3 percent.

A slowdown in the economy is already apparent to Emma Wang, 39, who owns a store selling handbags and suitcases in a shopping mall in Langzhong, a city in Sichuan Province where there are a handful of infections.

When she opened her store two years ago, business was steady and profitable. But more recently, people have started avoiding malls even though the city is not under lockdown. She is considering moving her business online to sell off her inventory.

“In the pandemic, there are no customers,” said Ms. Wang. “It’s difficult to sell even one bag.”

Compounding the problems for the mother of two is that her husband, who works for a food manufacturer whose business also has been disrupted, has not been paid by his employer for a few months.

“We have a mortgage and credit card loans,” she said. “The situation is not improving and it really upsets me.”

In China, Xi Jinping's absolute power is being challenged

News analysis

Frédéric Lemaître

Beijing (China) correspondent

China's children love their country, writes Le Monde's correspondent in Beijing. But restricting their freedom only leaves them craving for democracy.

Published on November 29, 2022 at 11h40, updated at 12h59 on November 29, 2022 Time to 5 min. Lire en français

During a Shanghai demonstration against China's zero-Covid policy on November 27, 2022. AP

Like any self-respecting dictator, Xi Jinping is convinced that whoever holds the party holds the country. The facts have long proven him right. With its 96 million members (about one adult in 12), the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is unparalleled in the world, physically present in the smallest neighborhoods and the smallest businesses in this continental country. Selected among the best pupils and students, its members constitute a technocratic elite that manages China according to Beijing's orders.

In President Xi Jinping's dream world, the CCP knows what is good for the people, since it itself comes from them. And since it makes the right decisions, the people are therefore grateful. One of the sentences he uttered at the 19th CCP congress in 2017 sums up his thinking quite well: "Party, state, military affairs, civil affairs, education, east, west, south, north, center – the party runs everything." His speech on October 16, at the opening of the 20th congress, is equally fascinating. The criticism of his predecessors occupied an infinitely greater place there than the management of Covid-19.

All evils come from abroad

The party was mentioned more than 140 times, far more than any other term. Similarly, following the congress, Mr. Xi did not go to a place symbolic of the China of 2022 to meet his people. Instead, he took the six other CCP leaders to the farthest reaches of Shaanxi, where Mao waited for his time from 1935 to 1949, in a region that is becoming a communist pilgrimage site. It's far from the China of tomorrow, but also from the China of today, which suffers from the zero-Covid policy, unemployment and bankrupt property developers.

Power isolates and absolute power isolates absolutely. Nothing illustrates this better than the demonstrations against the zero-Covid policy over the last few weeks and against the CCP dictatorship over the last few days. When Mr. Xi inspects a province – a communist leader does not "visit," he "inspects" – everything is organized so that he does not encounter any discontent.

A provincial teacher recently recounted how, one evening around 10 pm, the school principal called all the teachers to be present at 7 am because of an "important event." The next day, each teacher, accompanied by a policeman, had to go to a district in the city and give the order to each inhabitant to close and stay away from their windows. Still without knowing the reason for this strange instruction. It was only a few hours later that she realized that Mr. Xi was about to "inspect" the area and meet with a few hand-picked residents.

Similarly, in April 2021, the Chinese leader visited Tsinghua University, the most prestigious university in Beijing. After praising the experts "guided by Marxism," he left, greeted, according to the photos, by hundreds of young people waving small red flags. He probably concluded that the elite of tomorrow was satisfied with his standing. The problem is that these are the same students who, on November 27, demonstrated, sang "The Internationale" and demanded more democracy.

The young people of Generation Z are all the more courageous because many do not know what happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989

It is believed that leaders are better informed than the common man. This is not true. The journalists of the China News Agency have two functions: to publish articles intended to spread the official truth among the population and, at the same time, to transmit "real information" to Beijing.

For example, in Wuhan in January 2020, the same reporters explained to the people that the new virus could not be transmitted from human to human while writing the opposite to the leaders. According to a recent Associated Press investigation, the most important dispatches used to land on the prime minister's desk. But Mr. Xi demanded to receive them directly. As a result, journalists no longer dare to bring up bad news.

In the story of the Chinese leader, all of China's ills come from abroad, from a West that wanted to "humiliate" it for more than a century (1839-1949) before the CCP "liberated" it. It's the same West that incited the Arab Spring and the color revolutions starting in 2011, just before Mr. Xi came to supreme power and saved the CCP and the country.

'The same poison as in Hong Kong'

Since this weekend, this little nationalist tune can be heard again. "It's the same poison as in Hong Kong: young people who don't have local characteristics, but have a Taiwanese or Hong Kong accent and a Western appearance – a typical style of the color revolutions," denounced a blogger from Fudan University. "The demonstrations hurt our national solidarity and strengthen our enemies from within and outside," said Li Guangman, another well-known nationalist blogger, who also denounced the Chinese pharmaceutical laboratories, which are private and therefore corrupted by the West. Since Monday, in some cities, the police have been checking young people's cell phones and removing Western apps.

The CCP knows how to crack down on protesters through arrests and intimidation. In the coming days and weeks, the families of the protesters will be visited by the police and told that, in the interests of everyone, they should keep a closer eye on their children.

But the regime is clearly worried by this movement that it did not see coming. "With the relaxation of pandemic controls and the monitoring of the measures [adopted], public sentiment will calm down. I can make an absolute prediction: China will not fall into chaos or [get out] of control," wrote Hu Xijin, one of the regime's top propagandists, on Twitter.

One option for the government would be to relax the zero-Covid policy, while presenting it as a "unique success in the world" and, at the same time, to crack down on protesters, strengthen censorship on social media and increase pressure on teachers. In recent days, the media have been putting more emphasis on the Omicron variant's low-mortality rate and, as Li Guangman's article shows, have found a new scapegoat: the pharmaceutical companies. "If the pandemic is to be controlled, the mess with PCR testing must be stopped," wrote The Health Daily on November 29.

A desire for the West

Beyond the health policy, the weekend demonstrations showed that, despite the propaganda, a segment of the youth is ready to fight in the name of human rights and those values that the regime continues to define as purely "Western."

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Born after 2000, the young people of Generation Z are all the more courageous because a significant number of them know little or nothing about what happened in Tiananmen Square in June 1989.

Xi Jinping's children are both nationalistic and liberal. They love China and are proud of its successes, but they also want to be able to listen to Korean K-pop, watch NBA basketball games and see Chinese or foreign films that move them. By restricting their freedoms and pursuing an economic policy that makes their lives more difficult, Mr. Xi is awakening in them a desire for rights and openness that in recent years seemed to have lost its power.

Frédéric Lemaître(Beijing (China) correspondent)

"The Regime's Legitimacy Is Eroding"Iran Protests Continue Despite Brutal Repression

The uprising against the Islamist dictatorship in Iran is entering a new phase and the regime is doing all it can to survive. For how much longer can the mullahs cling to power?

By Anne Armbrecht, Julia Amalia Heyer, Muriel Kalisch, Mina Khani, Maximilian Popp, Christoph Reuter, Omid Rezaee und Özlem Topçu

25.11.2022, 17.49 Uhr

There isn’t a single place where she is safe from the regime’s henchmen, says Anoush, not even in her dreams.

It has been just over a month since DER SPIEGEL first spoke with Anoush, a teacher from the Iranian capital of Tehran in her mid-20s. At the time, the protests that erupted following the September death of the young Kurdish woman Jina Mahsa Amini had already spread throughout the country. Anoush says she began taking part in the demonstrations from the very beginning. Now, she has again decided to share her experiences, using long chat messages to do so. She has, however, changed the service she uses: She no longer feels that WhatsApp is secure enough.

DER SPIEGEL 48/2022

The article you are reading originally appeared in German in issue 48/2022 (November 26th, 2022) of DER SPIEGEL.

SPIEGEL International

The regime, she says, has drastically ratcheted up the pressure. The terror, she says, is everywhere, with only a fraction of it making it into the media. An acquaintance of hers, she says, was raped in prison after being arrested, with the guards having fired at her genitals with paintball guns. "Since then, I have been having a recurring nightmare of being raped myself," she says.

Despite the violence, people in Tehran and elsewhere in the country are continuing to take to the streets. Their primary focus this week has been the massacres in the Kurdish areas of the country. It is difficult, however, to determine where the demonstrations are taking place and how large they are since the internet has been blocked in many parts of the country.

"We cry ourselves to sleep and wake up with new hope."

Anoush, a teacher from Tehran

The fight against the dictatorship is no longer finding its expression only in street protests, says Anoush. "We are screaming from the windows, even if security forces are opening fire more frequently. We are boycotting companies that advertise on state television. We are using cash instead of credit cards, collecting money for the people in the Kurdish areas. It is difficult to get help to them, but some people are trying. When we cross the streets, we give each other the V for victory sign. We cry ourselves to sleep and wake up with new hope."

Fewer Mass Protests, More Flashmobs

The uprising against the mullahs has been underway for 10 weeks, longer than most thought possible – Iranian rulers, the international community, and even the protesters themselves. And the shape of the resistance is changing, according to reports from inside Iran. There are fewer mass protests, but more flashmobs. Small groups from a specific district, sometimes even just a single residential building, suddenly emerge and begin shouting: "Down with the dictatorship!," filming the event and then melting away. The anger, however, has remained just as intense. "Nobody is staying quiet," says a 41-year-old from the middle class Tehran district of Sadeghiyeh.

For many Iranians, the uprising has become a part of their everyday lives. In the social networks, images and videos are being shared by tens of thousands of people. You can see videos from Tehran showing people from all walks of life – from young hipsters to elegant, middle-aged women – strolling through the city with their hair uncovered and greeting each other with fist bumps. You can see embracing and kissing in front of their city’s landmarks.

In Iran at the moment, says the Bern-based Orientalist Reinhard Schulze – who is speaking on the phone with friends across the country almost daily – the definition of Iranian nation is currently at stake. The central question: Who represents the Iranians?

"We do," insists the regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which continues to have its opponents sentenced to death.

"We do," counter those who have risen up against the regime. Initially, their insurrection came merely in the form of refusing to cover their hair, instead tearing off their headscarves. Increasingly, though, the rebellion is becoming more militant, including the use of Molotov cocktails.

Schulze believes that the character of the Iranian nation has changed over the past several weeks. The population, he says, believes less and less in the promises made by the Islamic Republic and its institutions, which has been in power for 43 years. Day by day, people are demanding a more liberal model in which the rule of law should also play a strong role, says Schulze.

A Slap in the Face for Tehran

The fact that political power in the country is at stake could also be seen on Monday, when the Iranian national team at the World Cup in Qatar demonstratively kept their mouths closed during the playing of their country’s national anthem. It was a clear protest with the world watching – and a slap in the face of the rulers back in Tehran.

Most of the players on the Iranian national team had long been wary of making clear political statements, in part no doubt because of enormous pressure from the regime. On the eve of their departure for Doha, the players even met with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi. Did they have a choice? Images of the meeting distributed by the president’s office show the team sitting on chairs in a circle around Raisi. The players are wearing suits, with several of them bowing, hands over their hearts. Many began referring to them as "Team Mullah," and people on the streets of Tehran lit fire to World Cup posters and pictures of the team.

"The regime's legitimacy is eroding."

Reinhard Schulze, Orientalist

One can only guess at why the national team players ultimately decided to stage their silent protest. They provided no explanation following the match. Were they simply waiting for the largest possible stage for their gesture? Or did the pressure, after months of doing nothing, simply grow too heavy? Did they have a bad conscience vis-à-vis the millions who had idolized them? Or was it merely a desire to be on the "right side" of history?

It also isn’t clear how the regime will react to the anthem boycott. Ahead of the tournament, the national players were reportedly threatened. But it seems unlikely that the regime will exert the same force on the national team as they do against demonstrators on the streets. The players, believes the U.S.-based women’s rights activist Maryam Shojaei, are simply too popular. Shojaei focuses her work on gaining access for women to sporting events in Iran. Speaking of the players on the Iranian World Cup team, she says: "They enjoy an immunity that normal people don’t have."

That's why for Shojaei and other activists, the gesture of the national team players didn’t go far enough. "If you want to see real courage, then look at the young women who are risking their lives at the protests."

It is nevertheless clear that a significant shift is underway in Iranian society. "The regime’s legitimacy is eroding. They are no longer recognized by their own people,” says Orientalist Schulze. He believes that the mullah’s grip on power has become fragile. Of course, he says, it is difficult for many in the population to believe that the mullahs might one day be swept from power. But there is also a significant amount of hope and plenty of courage.

In the beginning, he was part of a group of four, says 23-year-old paramedic Ardalan, from the Kurdish north of the country, who told his story over the course of dozens of voice messages. They were an emergency response team tending to injured demonstrators. "Two were murdered and one was arrested. I’m the only one left." He says that he too was taken to prison and tortured, and charged with "insulting the Prophet" because he had helped the wounded. He was then released on bail, "and I’m still going! We have to treat the wounds immediately, otherwise many of them won’t survive." Early on, he says, they were fired at with teargas and buckshot, but that hasn’t been the case for some time. Now, he says, the regime is using snipers and "dushkas," – large-caliber machine guns that are frequently mounted on the beds of pickups.

Ever since Ayatollah Khomeini grabbed power in 1979, Tehran has been propagating the fight against purported American imperialism and against the discrimination of Shiite Muslims in Saudi Arabia and in other Gulf autocracies.

Even More Brutality in the Provinces

But the Islamic Republic has always been a state that oppresses minorities: the Kurds to the west, the Baluchis in the southeast and Sunni Arabs in the south. Since the first day of the unrest in September, protests in the Kurdish areas as well as those in Sistan and Baluchestan Province have been fired on with live ammunition.

"I don’t want to use the term 'state of war,'" says Ardalan, "because in a war, both sides are armed. But we only have bricks that we pile up to form barricades, while the other side is heavily armed."

Ardalan’s accounts cannot be independently verified, but they are consistent with the stories told by other sources. His identity is known to DER SPIEGEL. "We have established a network for the transportation of medical supplies and bandages," he continues. "We use side streets. All the main roads are monitored. At the roadblocks, they search for medical supplies. If you have any with you, you are arrested."

By law, the Red Crescent – the Muslim world’s version of the Red Cross – would be responsible for helping everyone. "Instead, those who are injured by the Revolutionary Guards are immediately taken to prison,” says Ardalan. "When they arrested me, they broke my fingers." Everyone knows the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran, he says, "but far worse things happen in prisons in Kurdistan, more torture." That, he says, is the regime’s method for spreading fear.

Normal life on the streets has been extinguished, says Ardalan. On the one hand, fear has translated into a de facto curfew. "I know women who have been shot simply because they wanted to go out for some bread." On the other hand, almost all store owners are striking and people are boycotting the state-owned supermarkets. Even money is running short, he says. His account has been frozen and cash machines aren’t working. "There are no banknotes any more in Kurdistan!"

Lessons for the City

The brutality in the provinces is intended as a warning to the residents of larger cities in the heart of the country. But this time, the violence has actually triggered the opposite effect. "We sympathize with them. We understand that we are confronting the same enemy,” says a Tehran resident who asked to remain anonymous out of concern for her safety.

The old relationships between city dwellers and the rural population have changed, she says. "We can learn from them," the woman from Tehran says. "They have much more experience than we do when it comes to organizing street battles. How to immediately collect elsewhere when the first demonstration is crushed. How to organize help for the injured. How to transform a funeral into a rally."

In Iran, state institutions and, especially, the hundreds of thousands who are part of the Revolutionary Guard and their minions are holding firm, along with the huge number of private citizens who benefit from Iran’s parallel economy. The Revolutionary Guard has control of huge swaths of the economy: airports, oil terminals, hospitals and universities. And this parallel economy is nourished by the Western sanctions, resulting in an army of profiteers who would lose their privileges if the Islamic Republic were to collapse.

Afshon Ostovar, a professor of national security affairs at the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey, California, and the author of a book about the Revolutionary Guard, believes the regime is approaching its end. "What we are seeing right now is a generational revolution, the younger generation against the regime," he says. He doesn’t want to predict whether it will be successful now, or only in one, two or five years. "The undoing of the Iranian regime has begun." With every young person who is killed, Ostovar says, the Supreme Leader is also losing the support of the victim’s cousins, aunts, uncles, parents and grandparents.

German-Iranian political scientist Ali Fathollah-Nejad believs it will ultimately depend on how workers respond. There have already been protests among contract workers in the oil and gas sector. Fathollah-Nejad says they are debating whether and when to join the uprising. He says that such a coalition of demonstrators and workers would have good chances for success. "They have something in common: They don’t believe that their lives will improve under this regime."

In Iran’s south, to be sure, where the largest oil fields are located, there have thus far been fewer demonstrations than in Tehran or Kurdistan. But strikes and protests are on the rise there as well. Workers at an oil refinery, long-haul truck drivers and employees of the automobile producer Bahman Motor in Tehran are demanding change – specifically wages that they can survive on.

Ultimately, the slogan used thus far in these protests – Woman, Life, Freedom – could soon be expanded to include another word: Bread