Shanghai seethes in lockdown, posing threat to China's leadership

As the coronavirus races through Shanghai, in the city’s worst outbreak since the pandemic began, the authorities have deployed their usual hard-nosed playbook to try and stamp out transmission, no matter the cost. What has been different is the response: an outpouring of public dissatisfaction rarely seen in China since the chaotic early days of the pandemic, in Wuhan.

The crisis in Shanghai is shaping up to be more than just a public health challenge. It is also a political test of the zero tolerance approach at large, on which the Communist Party has staked its legitimacy…

But in shutting down Shanghai, an economic engine that contributes 4 percent of China’s gross domestic product, the authorities have revived questions about the costs of their approach, especially in the face of the highly transmissible, relatively mild Omicron variant. If even Shanghai could be cut off, people might worry there was no limit to how far the government would go, said Lynette Ong, a political scientist at the University of Toronto.

“The fact that Shanghai is being locked down suggests that we are pretty close to the red line, to the tolerable limit of how defensible zero Covid is,” Professor Ong said. “This is a big city with a 25 million population, and is extremely challenging to undergo lockdown — it’s pretty close to people’s psychological breaking point.”