China's Covid zero strategy: Xi holds few cards to end historic protests

Beijing says it won't set up gates to block access to Covid-hit compounds anymore

The protests that erupted against China’s Covid-Zero strategy represent one of the most significant challenges to Communist Party rule since the Tiananmen crisis more than 30 years ago. The protests are broad and Xi has few good options to defuse the widely-shared anger, analysts say. A “crackdown is predictable,” like Tiananmen Square in 1989 and Hong Kong in 2019, says Perry Link, a professor at the University of California, Riverside. Xi will “sacrifice all kinds of things in order to stay in control.”

“You’d expect them to have a heavy-handed repressive approach, but that risks creating martyrs, fuelling another wave and