China must eventually learn to live with the coronavirus

AN OUTBREAK OF covid-19 on the scale China is experiencing would barely register in most countries. Much of the world has decided to live with the virus. Not China, though. So far in March it has recorded around 27,000 new local symptomatic cases—and each one is viewed as a threat to the government’s “zero-covid” policy. For two years China has smothered outbreaks using mass-testing, strict lockdowns and by tracking its people in ways that would make Mark Zuckerberg blush.

Chinese leaders think their policy a huge success. The Economist estimates that the country’s death rate from covid is 5% of America’s. The Chinese economy has expanded by 10.5% in the past two years, compared with 2.4% in America and 0.4% in advanced economies generally. China’s covid controls “demonstrate the advantages” of the Chinese Communist Party’s leadership and the socialist system, boasts Xi Jinping, the president. All the signs are that his people tend to agree.