“A wave of protests coupled with urgent pleas from many corners of the government finally prodded the leader to scrap the strict lockdown system he had touted throughout the pandemic”----WSJ
“Doctors and nurses across the country’s hospitals, as well as officials at local branches of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, were given no advance warning of the shift, leaving them to face a spike in patients with no stockpiles of medical essentials.”
权力集中后能痛快地办大事
石爺
麻婆豆父
Amid the surge, Mr. Xi, who has embarked on his third term as the country’s most formidable leader since Mao Zedong, has increasingly curtailed policy debate and sidelined anyone raising public doubts about the zero-Covid strategy.
“As with other man-made disasters in China’s history,” said Mary Gallagher, a professor of Chinese politics at the University of Michigan, “political loyalty to the core leader now means no dissent, no collective decision-making and a lack of debate and discussion within the party on critical policy shifts.”—WSJ