No Exit From Zero COVID for Xi Jinping

The death of China’s former leader Jiang Zemin after a week of countrywide demonstrations of popular discontent with Xi Jinping’s signature zero-COVID policy, adds one more potentially potent factor to a volatile political situation. Xi has built a cult of personality around himself that resembles that of Mao Zedong. Jiang, who ruled as the party’s general secretary from 1989 to 2002, may not have had that stature, but his tenure casts an unflattering light on today’s flagging economy and harsh social controls.  

Jiang died at a moment when the politics that he represented are out of favor with the party leadership. He may not have been a great reformer, but he fostered China’s emerging business class and allowed Chinese civil society to flourish—censorship of ideas in his time was relatively mild. Jiang is remembered for supporting market reforms, and for opening China to the rest of the world, laying the foundations for the nation’s decades of rising prosperity.

Chinese leaders frequently invoke history as a source of legitimacy—one reason, perhaps, why they equally frequently rewrite it—and they are keenly aware of the resonance of past events. They will remember