In chess, when a move is necessary but every option makes the situation worse, players are said to be in zugzwang. Chinese leader Xi Jinping — juggling purported efforts to ease pandemic measures, surging Covid infections and inadequate vaccination rates, plus angry protests, a faltering economy and an approaching winter — appears to find himself in political zugzwang.
Extracting the world’s most populous nation and the second-largest economy from Covid Zero after three years is both possible and necessary, but it’s also a test of the government’s flexibility and responsiveness, and China isn’t passing with flying colors. That should worry, as Beijing’s ability to reset public health policies will also be a crucial indication of how well an increasingly tightly controlled and centralized system will unpick other tangles — social, economic, environmental or geopolitical — that require just such pragmatism.
