CCP comes first as China struggles with COVID

More than two years later, politics are still front and centre in China's handling of the pandemic. The Chinese Communist Party is quite willing to put the nation's interest behind its own, implementing policies that have now resulted in tens of millions of people being confined to their flats for several weeks.

The CCP may yet have to lock up tens or hundreds of millions more. Above all, President Xi Jinping, elevated as a sort of demigod by party propaganda, must not be embarrassed nor seen to have made a mistake.

Looking at China's situation from Australia is already like looking at another world. Life's just about normal here, and we've almost forgotten those issues that grabbed our attention for a couple of years: contact tracing, lockdowns and resulting economic damage.

All those things are bigger than ever in China, however.

There's no sign of China going into an exit wave, as most of Australia did late last year, bolstering vaccine-induced immunity with widespread but generally mild infection and, hopefully, beginning a new era of living with COVID.

Instead, China has doubled down on suppressing the virus, now standing with only North Korea in refusing to go forward.

The results have been fairly predictable. Even this column, hardly qualified in epidemiology, pointed out in January that China's pandemic outlook was unpromising and that lockdowns to control fast-moving Omicron would have to be harsh, if they worked at all.

And so we see the people of Shanghai, the country's largest city, confined to their flats and relying on deliveries for food. In other cities, notably Beijing, movement rules keep tightening to give what is undoubtedly a superb contact-tracing establishment a chance against the latest coronavirus variant.

Beijing is already close to what we would regard as a lockdown, with restaurants and many shopping malls, gyms and cinemas closed. A recent test certificate is needed for using public transport or entering a supermarket.

Across China, isolation rules have closed factories and crippled transportation capacity. A shortage of goods from China will contribute to inflation here, by the way.

If China's contact tracers lose their grip, more cities will presumably have to follow Shanghai into imposing general home confinement.

Quite possibly, China is just not in a position to get out of this right now.

It suited the CCP politically to tell the Chinese people it had a homegrown solution to the pandemic. The government licensed only Chinese vaccines, which some evidence suggests may not be good enough against Omicron.

Maybe if the CCP tried an exit wave in a weakly vaccinated population the result would be vastly overloaded hospitals and an unacceptable number of deaths. We don't know, but the party surely does.

China still hasn't licensed those excellent Western vaccines that have saved the rest of the world. But, then again, those vaccines probably wouldn't be well received by the Chinese people, because the CCP's propaganda has trash-talked them.

Politics, politics, politics.

Then there's one of the weirdest political phenomenons in China, the party's determination to achieve a sort of national serenity during politically important times.

In the typical case, just before and during the annual meeting of parliament, rules everywhere are suddenly all obeyed and workers and managers, especially those connected to the government, suddenly work with diligence. Then it's over, and everything goes slack again.

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It's about face - prestige. Anything that goes wrong during the parliament session would reflect badly on the party, so the word goes out that everything must be ship-shape and Bristol fashion.

During these spasms, there's more than the usual number of staff meetings, with managers haranguing everyone to do as required, though everyone's heard it all before. The managers have already been harangued by their managers, the company by its state supervisory office, the office by its department, and so on up the line of command.

Each level fears punishment and loss of face by making a mistake that embarrasses the level above it.

So, for a few weeks, the streets are cleaner, just about all government employees stay at work until their shifts end, the cops close dodgy bars, there's much less chance of industrial accidents, and so on. All for appearances.

Appearances are all the more important for Xi this year, because his third five-year term as leader is supposed to be confirmed some time after June. Between now and the confirmation, he hardly wants the country racked by contagion, with the population terrified of rampant infection and bereaved by millions of deaths.

The exalted leader would hardly look like he was in control.

Another problem is that the suppression policy is identified with Xi. Admitting that it was wrong would be a bit like admitting that the pope was fallible.

Again, the party's interest comes first.

And it must be the party generally, not just Xi, that's behind this. Now that he's been built up over the past decade as a sort of super-leader, CCP members who are doing well out of the party's rule must have become dependent on him, in the way that an arch depends on its keystone.

An interesting difficulty for the party is that many Chinese know that the rest of the world has moved on to living with COVID. That word will only spread. What do the Shanghainese think about that as they look out of their windows, wondering when they'll finally leave their flats?