China Zero Covid Policy: Crackdowns Went Too Far

As China’s lockdown-weary population erupted in protests over the past week in response to the Chinese Communist Party’s commitment to its draconian “zero Covid” approach, American media have struck a supportive tone: The uprisings, the New York Times reported yesterday, speak “to the deep well of anger inside China against the country’s exceptionally stringent Covid policies.” In the U.S. political and public-health establishments, too, there appears to be an emerging bipartisan consensus that the Chinese lockdowns have gone too far. This past weekend, Anthony Fauci admitted: “It seems that in China it was just a very, very strict extraordinary lockdown where you lock people in the house but without any, seemingly, endgame to it.” Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Congressman Chris Smith (R., N.J.) released a joint statement urging the U.S. to “be unwavering in our support for the Chinese people as they bravely call for freedom.” Even the Biden administration issued a cautious statement arguing that “it’s going to be very difficult for the People’s Republic of China to be able to contain the virus through their zero COVID strategy.”

This conventional wisdom comes amid overwhelming evidence of the human-rights abuses committed against the Chinese people in the name of zero Covid. Earlier this month, a 55-year-old mother jumped to her death from the top of her apartment, which had been welded shut by CCP officials, in the city of Hohhot. A few weeks later, a fire in another locked-down apartment killed at least ten in Xinjiang, triggering this latest wave of protests: “A video on social media of a woman screaming in the burning high-rise apartment block in Urumqi, capital of far western Xinjiang region, frightened people across China who have been facing rolling quarantines and lockdowns that can cause their apartment blocks to be closed off or blocked by steel gates,” Bloomberg reported.

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Nate Hochman

Nate Hochman was a staff writer at National Review.

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As China’s lockdown-weary population erupted in protests over the past week in response to the Chinese Communist Party’s commitment to its draconian “zero Covid” approach, American media have struck a supportive tone: The uprisings, the New York Times reported yesterday, speak “to the deep well of anger inside China against the country’s exceptionally stringent Covid policies.” In the U.S. political and public-health establishments, too, there appears to be an emerging bipartisan consensus that the Chinese lockdowns have gone too far. This past weekend, Anthony Fauci admitted: “It seems that in China it was just a very, very strict extraordinary lockdown where you lock people in the house but without any, seemingly, endgame to it.” Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Congressman Chris Smith (R., N.J.) released a joint statement urging the U.S. to “be unwavering in our support for the Chinese people as they bravely call for freedom.” Even the Biden administration issued a cautious statement arguing that “it’s going to be very difficult for the People’s Republic of China to be able to contain the virus through their zero COVID strategy.”

This conventional wisdom comes amid overwhelming evidence of the human-rights abuses committed against the Chinese people in the name of zero Covid. Earlier this month, a 55-year-old mother jumped to her death from the top of her apartment, which had been welded shut by CCP officials, in the city of Hohhot. A few weeks later, a fire in another locked-down apartment killed at least ten in Xinjiang, triggering this latest wave of protests: “A video on social media of a woman screaming in the burning high-rise apartment block in Urumqi, capital of far western Xinjiang region, frightened people across China who have been facing rolling quarantines and lockdowns that can cause their apartment blocks to be closed off or blocked by steel gates,” Bloomberg reported.