The Chinese Communist Party’s insistence on “zero-Covid” strategy to tackle local outbreaks is not so much about science but the choice of its top leader Xi Jinping, who ties the success of the strategy to his own greatness, says Jeffrey A. Tucker, president of Texas-based think tank the Brownstone Institute. “Xi Jinping made a profound error in believing that his prowess and the personality cult that surrounds him was capable of taking on the greatest challenge in the history of humanity,” Tucker told Epoch TV’s ‘China Insider’ programme. “So now, he [Xi] bet everything, his political future, the status and credibility of the CCP, the entire China model of governance and economics and culture and technology, everything on this one claim that, ‘we’re using the right strategies and right kinds of science,’” Tucker said. Shanghai, a city of 25 million people, has been under lockdown since early April. Many residents have voiced complaints arising from the measures including excessive testing for Covid-19, shortages of food and medicines, forced separation of infected children from their parents, poor conditions at quarantine centres, and rough treatment at the hands of pandemic-control officers. “Zero-Covid strategy has been discredited,” Tucker said. “The world discovered that China was wrong two years ago, that it didn’t actually get rid of the virus, the virus is spread all over the world. “Xi Jinping believes this is an insult or a challenge to his greatness,” he said. “If I’m right about this, this could be a very serious threat to political stability in China.”
