The Chinese Communist Party plans to avoid a zero-covid reckoning

Across China, families are enduring avoidable misery and heartbreak, as loved ones succumb to a deadly—and predictable—wave of covid-19 infections for which their rulers failed to prepare. Some overseas analysts talk of a turning-point. They wonder if today’s policy disarray, which follows on the heels of anti-lockdown protests in late 2022, signals a crisis of legitimacy for President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party.

This is a grim moment for China’s people. For all the claims that infections have peaked in big cities like Beijing, there will, tragically, be more deaths when the virus finds older folk now sheltering at home, or living in rural villages. A shameful number of those deaths will be preventable. Yet it is possible that Mr Xi will pay no visible price for pandemic horrors on his watch.