The economy can be better or worse; social unrest, remain latent or erupt, and the pandemic, worsen or subside, but national security is not negotiated. The Chinese cat will continue to hunt mice; that is, maintaining control.
The phrase was blurted out by Deng Xiaoping to Felipe González in 1985, on the first visit of the president of the Spanish government to China. They talked about the economy: González wondered if it was possible to maintain the communist discourse in the middle of the reform process to introduce the market economy in China. “White cat or black cat, no one cares, if it catches mice,” Deng replied. If the economy works and the country prospers, ideology matters little.
Today that Confucian-rooted pragmatism continues in Xi Jinping’s China, but it is no longer about the economy, but about national security. The protests a few weeks ago in several of the most important cities in the country – which surprised the entire world –, the subsequent repression and now the apparent change of course in the zero Covid policy are a clear sign in this regard. The economy can be better or worse; social unrest, remain latent or erupt, and the pandemic, worsen or subside, but national security is not negotiated. The Chinese cat will continue to hunt mice; that is, maintaining control.
We do not know exactly the magnitude of the protests, but the simple fact that they took place already says a lot. Protests are very common in China, which is logical, on the other hand, in a country with more than 1.4 billion inhabitants, the most populous on the planet. Protests are usually raised against local authorities and focus on specific problems: lack of services, pollution problems, poor crisis management, defaults, corruption scandals… The protesters also normally request help from the central government, urging it to intervene. and solve your problems. As a rule, this acts, “correcting” the local authorities and appeasing the discontent.
The demonstrations at the end of November, however, fall into another category, both in scope and in the spirit behind them. They took place in more than a dozen cities –among them Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan or Urumqui, the capital of Xinjiang– and in more than twenty universities, spread throughout the vast geography of the country. They brought together a variety of social strata, from workers to students, passing through the middle class. They all called for an end to the harsh – and sometimes arbitrary – measures associated with the zero Covid policy: massive tests, centralized quarantines, mobility restrictions and strict confinements. Several protests led to calls for greater freedoms, especially of expression, and some even dared to demand a change of government, something not seen in China since the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.
Many in China are understandably both fed up and scared of the pandemic. The social and economic cost of the fight against SARS-CoV-2 has not stopped growing in recent years. The months of confinement, the lack of income and the increase in the price of food have undermined the morale of the population. At the end of November, almost 500 million people in China suffered from some type of mobility restriction. Residential complexes in Beijing were surrounded by steel barriers to block exits. The contacts of the contacts of the infected also had to be quarantined. In the first quarter of 2022, more than 460,000 companies closed across the country, while youth unemployment today is close to 20%. Add to this the slow-motion implosion of the real estate sector, which has wiped out much of the wealth of the middle class, and we have an explosive cocktail. In 2011, China’s GDP was growing at a rate of 9.6%. The International Monetary Fund forecasts growth of just 3.2% this year.
In the Editor’s Notes of mid-October, ahead of the celebration of the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that crowned Xi as the new Great Helmsman, we wondered how much repression the majority of the population could endure. The November protests point out that everything has a limit: the CCP and also Xi himself. The question we must ask ourselves now is how this explicit and widespread malaise will condition Xi’s remaining years in power, which could be many. Will you stay the course, despite this clear warning? Or will it take a turn?
In the short term, the signs seem to point to the zero Covid policy becoming more flexible, even disappearing, within the framework of an exit strategy from the pandemic. This is not a faith of errors: the official discourse will say that the pandemic has entered a new, less dangerous phase and that it is time to return to normality, step by step. The risks of this change in strategy, however, are enormous, with the threat of a new wave of infections in the winter, as happened in the spring in Hong Kong. The case of Taiwan is illustrative in this sense. With a much more robust health system than China’s, Taiwan suffered during its “return to normal” a mortality rate of 0.2%. Something similar in China would imply millions of deaths.
The fact that the CCP and Xi correct the course with regard to Covid –as they have already done with another policy with disastrous consequences, that of the only child– does not imply that they are going to do so in more “strategic” issues, related to national security in a broad sense. The hypothetical relaxation of the zero Covid policy will be accompanied, predictably, by an increase in surveillance and repression. Tragically, the protests will prove Xi right: the country is under siege on many fronts – external and internal – and the recipe for survival and progress is more heavy-handed, not less. With pragmatism and some room for manoeuvre, but without hesitation. Xi will understand that this is not the time to slow down.
It already happened in 1989, although on a much larger scale. So, a population desperate for inflation, unemployment, inequality and injustice took to the streets and squares of China. The demonstrations, motivated by material issues, ended up deriving into pro-democratic protests. The repression was brutal, with Deng at the controls of the state apparatus. Since then, as US sinologist Yuen Yuen Ang explains, the CCP has developed a much more sophisticated arsenal of repression strategies. She knows that violently crushing protests in full view is too expensive. According to Yuen, the experience with Hong Kong suggests that the protests could continue for a while, surfacing here and there, but sooner or later the central government will end the defiance by punishing the protesters one by one, “settling scores.”
We have seen it in Hong Kong, but also in Belarus, Iran and Russia. At night, all cats are gray. And those who do not receive communion, mice.
