Opinion by David Von Drehle: As covid evolves, China’s obstinance grows — at huge economic cost
The virus has evolved, but China appears to have learned nothing from the world’s fight against covid. In pursuit of the impossible goal of “Eyck Freymann writing in the Wall Street Journal
, worry that draconian measures will continue indefinitely, at great cost to China and the world, because Xi cannot afford to change his mind. To abandon the zero covid policy “would require the Communist Party to countermand an order that it has repeatedly and unequivocally given for more than two years,” Freymann wrote. “This not only would be an admission of failure, it would badly delegitimize Mr. Xi’s carefully constructed hero-cult.”We see something tragically similar in Russia.
Authoritarian governments look strong from the outside, unburdened by the noise and mess of partisan competition and free enterprise. But, eventually, they fall prey to this inherent weakness: By centralizing decisions and cutting off debate, they render themselves unable to learn and grow. Ideas come from a single source, the leader, rather than bubbling up from the wisdom of the crowd. Once spoken, the fiats cannot change without wounding the leader’s credibility.
One challenge for the United States and allied democracies is to appreciate the dynamic power in our often unruly debates. By dissenting from authority, by questioning established dogma, by challenging expert opinions, we foster the creation of ideas and test those ideas to find the strongest ones.Xi’s declared purpose in pursuing his “zero covid” policies is to prove that China’s one-party, all-powerful surveillance state is superior to Western models based on human rights.
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