China Should Listen to Covid Protesters
Xi Jinping’s top priority should be reopening safely — not suppressing dissent.
The lesson Chinese President Xi Jinping drew from the fall of the Soviet Union is that leaders must show strength in the face of threats. Now confronting perhaps the greatest challenge to emerge during his rule, Xi should instead show flexibility.
Over the weekend, protesters took to the streets in several Chinese cities including Shanghai and Beijing to demand an end to the government’s draconian “Covid Zero” policies; remarkably, some called for Xi himself to step down. While the demonstrations were relatively small, the fact that factory workers, university students and middle-class urbanites have in recent days united around a single demand, in cities extending from the prosperous eastern coast to the Uyghur heartland of Xinjiang, will worry authorities deeply. China has seen no similar movement since the 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square.