Shanghai was on lockdown for months in early 2022 as the CCP pursued it’s paralyzing “Zero COVID” policy.
China: The Deepest Crisis for 30 Years Vincent Kolo, chinaworker.info
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succession of economic and political disasters is casting a dark cloud over Xi Jinping’s impending coronation as China’s dictator-for-life. Paralyzing “Zero COVID” lockdowns of major cities, collapsing GDP growth, record unemployment levels, and accelerating imperialist conflict in the shadow of the Ukraine war have plunged Chinese society into its deepest crisis for thirty years. All social classes have a sense of deep economic pessimism and fear of what the future holds. The brutality of the “Zero COVID” policy has stoked anger on an unprecedented scale against the regime. Xi has reportedly instructed senior officials that this year’s GDP must at all costs come in above the U.S. figure, an improbable outcome unless the U.S. economy has a hard landing. Bloomberg has downgraded its China GDP forecast to 2% while forecasting 2.8% for the U.S. No international forecasting agency now predicts growth above 4.3% for China in 2022, far short of the government’s 5.5% target. At the five-yearly congress of the so-called Communist Party (CCP) to be held later this year, Xi will extend his rule with a third term as general secretary or possibly by reviving the long dormant post of CCP chairman. The congress is no more than a rubber-stamping ritual, with its main business de-
cided in advance through a process of trade-offs among the 40 or so main leaders of bureaucratic capitalist clans and factions. Xi’s concentration of personal power and abandonment of the “collective dictatorship” model of the past four decades, since the CCP under Deng Xiaoping initiated the process of capitalist restoration, is an expression of deep crisis within the regime and Chinese society. Social, political, and regional tensions are reaching a bursting point. These internal pressures are one of the drivers of imperialist conflict, as Chinese capitalism is forced to seek a bigger global role. At the same time, the imperialist U.S.-China Cold War exacerbates internal contradictions. Xi wanted stability more than anything else this year, to realize his lifetime-rule project as smoothly as possible. The word “stability” was mentioned 76 times in the government’s annual work report, delivered by Premier Li Keqiang to this year’s National People’s Congress (pseudo-parliament) in March. But stability is nowhere to be seen.
“Zero COVID”. Who Pays?
This year’s outbreaks of the highly transmissible Omicron variant have brought forth a policy of dystopian shock and awe from the dictatorship. The mass lockdowns of 2022 have no parallel in human history. Over 300 million people have been directly affected, enduring weeks of house arrest, loss of
